Chocolate Covered Pretzel Toffee

If you’re my dentist, then I certainly didn’t eat any of this.  Not a smidge.  Now, look away…

If you follow me on Twitter, then you would have heard me profess my love of Cybercandy and my love of Pretzel M&Ms.  The hard sugar shell, chocolate and then pretzel are a sugary mouthful of heaven and I knew I had to pay homage. 

Recipe adapted from SeriousEats.com

Ingredients

115gr butter

250gr caster sugar

2tbsp golden syrup

Pinch of salt

¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda

½ tsp vanilla extract

90gr crushed pretzels (not dust, chunky crushed)

100gr dark chocolate (chips or just chopped up block)

Couple of pinches of rough sea salt (optional)

You will also need:-

A sugar thermometer (unless you are happy doing it with a cold saucer or a glass of water)

Baking sheet

Greaseproof paper

(Measure everything out before starting because I found I was scrabbling around for my measuring spoons and chopping chocolate like a thing possessed!)

Method

1, Add the butter, sugar, syrup, salt and a couple of tablespoons of cold water to a medium sized saucepan.  Stir gently over a low heat until everything has dissolved.

2, Clip on a sugar thermometer and turn the heat up to medium/medium-high.

3, Prepare a baking tray with a layer of grease proof baking paper. 

4, Keep an eye on the toffee, stir it gently occasionally and bring it up to 145o/c or hard crack stage. 

5, When it has reached this, carefully remove from the heat, unhook the sugar thermometer and stir in the vanilla and the bicarbonate of soda.  Be careful, it will hiss and spit at you. 

6, Quickly stir in the pretzels and make sure they are all covered.

7, Tip the entire lot onto your baking sheet and spread as evenly as possible.

8, Leave this for a couple of minutes before sprinkling with the chocolate.  Wait another couple of minutes and the chocolate will have melted enough to be spread using either a spatula or a pastry brush.  Sprinkle with some rough sea salt like Maldon (or my favourite, Cornish Sea Salt)

9, Cover and leave to cool or pop it in the fridge.

10, Smack it with a rolling pin to make bite size shards when fully cooled.