In my most recent mood to make, I decided to cook up two batches of toffee. I decided to make some with dark chocolate (Callebaut 55%), a Callebaut milk chocolate, and an El Rey white chocolate. I had bought different nuts to use-- pecans, hazelnuts, pistachios-- but got lazy and just decided pecans would be fine with all three chocolates.
Toffee isn't really all that hard to make-- if you can boil water, you can make toffee. Just remember to make it on a cool, dry day. Too much humidity in the air can mess it up.
The real skill in making toffee is safety, which is why I was not happy to see my niece and two nephews drop by for a visit in the middle of my toffee making. With them over, it wasn't just a matter of watching the boiling pot-- it was also a matter of watching three kids who normally give themselves no boundaries in my tiny condo.
Soon as they came in, they smelled the butter and sugar and followed their noses to America's Smallest Kitchen. "What's this? Whatcha makin'? When's it going to be done? Can I help? No, I want to help -- can I sprinkle the nuts on? Can I spread the chocolate? When do we get to taste it? Why is it taking so long?"
I shoo them all out of the kitchen -- "Hot sugar is dangerous," I tell them -- and find a movie to pop into the DVD player, but the movie isn't enough to distract them from the sweet smell and the sound of bubbling. Not five minutes after the movie started, they were all up and about, asking questions, horseplaying, talking about basketball, and so on. In all the commotion I happen to catch the youngest, my 10-year-old nephew, pulling the candy thermometer out of the pot with his fingers poised to swipe some of the hot mixture off.
"WHAT do you THINK you're DOING?!" Just as I said it, I realized I had a power which my mother said would only come to me after childbirth-- the StunVoice. I'm pretty sure I yelled loud enough to put the folks in Quantico on alert. My poor nephew nearly jumped out of his skin and almost dropped the thermometer. His brown eyes flew open to the size of golf balls and remained fixed at that size until the stun wore off.
I took the thermometer from him. "Can you read this?" I was careful not to shake it and fling liquid toffee everywhere. By this time the entire condo was quiet and the other children were looking on.
"Yeah," he answered.
"Can you tell me what the temperature is?" It had already started dropping, but I figured it was still high enough for the lesson I was giving him.
"Um... 220," he said.
"Do you really want to touch something that's 220 degrees? Do you really want to try to put it on your tongue?"
"Uhhh..."
"You know what?" I said before he could shake the shock enough to say no. "I could tie you to a stake, put you in the middle of a huge pile of wood, start a bonfire, and your death would be less painful than a burn from HOT SUGAR."
Horrible, I know. Really horrible. I was furious, and there was an important message in there, but I feel a need to repent or at least confess. My nephew is probably emotionally scarred for life. But it's not like they don't do the same thing to teens taking drivers' ed, right? I don't know for sure if there's any truth to what I said. I know a hot sugar burn can be very bad-- sometimes the sugar has to be peeled from a victim's skin-- and I also know that if you are burned at the stake you die from suffocation, not from being burned. So... maybe it's true...?
I put my hands on my hips, like a mother, and stood over him, trying to use my eyes to drive the message home. His jaw just hung from his head and I thought I might have to give him mouth-to-mouth so he'd breathe again. But in his glassy eyes, I saw my mission had been accomplished. I'd put the fear of hot sugar in him, and not one of my three visitors stepped into the kitchen for the rest of the evening.
