Magazine Monday #19: Chocolate Toffee Squares

This week's Magazine Monday contribution comes from the December 2008 issue of, what else, Canadian Living.

These squares do require some special equipment: the parchment paper is a must, but it's cheap and readily available, has many uses, and in some cases is even reusable; also, you'll need either a candy thermometer or a digital food thermometer to make the toffee layer. These bars are so decadent I could barely keep my hands off them, but I was disappointed that they didn't quite turn out like the ones in the picture! Ah well.

The recipe is here.




I used Nilla wafers and crushed them in a ziplock bag with swift, callous whacks from my rolling pin. It was fun.







The toffee layer was easy to make despite the fact that you need the thermometer. You essentially just melt the ingredients all together, and allow them to burble away on the stove for a bit until nice and caramel-y. I could happily have eaten this right out of the pot as it was.






I have no idea what the "thread" stage is that the recipe refers to, so I just simmered the mixture until it reached the specified temperature (I'm high altitude, so I boiled it to 112C). The mixture got nice toffee-ish flecks in it.





My ganache didn't set very well, despite being in the freezer for a while, but I hope that it will firm up after a longer sit. The toffee layer set very nicely and the entire package tasted out of this world!




As I mentioned in my last MM post, I'll be hosting MM for the month of December while Ivonne is away. If you have a magazine recipe you've made that you'd like to contribute, let me know and I'll link to you!

Enjoy!