Everton Toffie

Instructions

1. No. 1 - Put three ounces of very fresh butter into a brass skillet or small preserving-pan, and as soon as it is just melted add a pound of brown sugar of moderate quality.
2. Keep these stirred gently over a very clear fire for about fifteen minutes, or until a little of the mixture, dropped into a basin of cold water, breaks clean between the teeth without sticking to them.
3. When it is boiled to this point, it must be poured out immediately, or it will burn.
4. The grated rind of a lemon, added when the toffie is half done, improves it much; or a small teaspoonful of powdered ginger, moistened with a little of the other ingredients as soon as the sugar is dissolved and then stirred into the whole, will vary it pleasantly to many tastes.
5. Acton's caution: the real Everton toffie is made with a much larger proportion of butter, but it is the less wholesome on that very account.
6. If dropped upon dishes first rubbed with a buttered paper, the toffie when cold can be raised from them easily.
7. Proportions (No. 1): butter, 3 oz.; sugar, 1 lb.: 15 to 18 minutes. Or, sugar, 1 lb.; butter, 5 oz.; almonds, 2 oz.: 20 to 30 minutes.
8. No. 2 - Boil together a pound of sugar and five ounces of butter for twenty minutes.
9. Then stir in two ounces of almonds blanched, divided, and thoroughly dried in a slow oven, or before the fire.
10. Let the toffie boil after they are added, till it crackles when dropped into cold water, and snaps between the teeth without sticking.
11. Proportions (No. 2): sugar, 1 lb.; butter, 5 oz.; almonds, 2 oz.: 20 to 30 minutes.