Sweets similar to toffee have been known in France under the name “taffy” since the 15th century. But when in 1902 the French confectioner Josué de Mornas tried their recipe in St. Petersburg, he decided that he had to come up with a different name for these sweets - one that would definitely be remembered by the Russians. And it will not only be remembered, but will be associated with something especially tender. It was then that the French pastry chef thought that this delicacy reminded him of delicate flowers -. This is how the name of the sweets that I will talk about today came about.
How are toffees made?
A mixture of molasses, vegetable and butter, sugar and condensed milk - that's what toffee is! All components are combined, then slowly heated and boiled. The resulting mass is cooled, it becomes viscous and thick. And after that, using a special machine, long ropes are made from the toffee mass, which are cut into pieces and wrapped in packaging.
What types of iris are there?
According to the method of production, iris is divided into cast and printed. If you don’t like candy sticking to your teeth, but instead prefer toffee that crumbles and melts in your mouth, choose mass-produced toffee. During its production, the viscous mass is mixed with crumbs of ready-made toffees. This is how it is possible to achieve a semi-solid consistency.
By the way, about consistency. Iris happens:
- soft;
- viscous;
- semi-solid.
For example, “Golden Key” is a molded semi-solid iris, and “Kis-kis” is viscous.
Foreign relatives of the iris
On the packaging of many sweets you may have noticed the words "toffee" or "fudge". In fact, these are also toffees, but they taste a little different from their counterparts with Soviet history.
In English-speaking countries there are:
- toffee ( toffee) - toffee without adding milk;
- fudge ( fudge) - toffee with milk.
By the way, fruit-based fudge with the addition of nuts in the countries of the former USSR is often called sherbet.
Now, after you have learned so many useful facts about iris, it will be much easier for you to choose exactly the type that you like most on the store shelves. Bon appetit!
The smells during cooking, and later the taste of the candy, took me back to my distant student years, when my mother gave us sour cream with the hope that the children would cook borscht, and we made toffee from it. And the whole floor usually came running to this extraordinary aroma. At that time we didn’t have molds - everything cooled in an ordinary deep bowl, and then everyone chopped off a piece for themselves with a knife.
From two ingredients - sour cream and sugar - you can make excellent Toffee candies at home. There are no difficulties in preparation. Try it, you will like the result!
Ingredients
To make Toffee candies at home, we will need:
sour cream - 750 ml;
sugar - 500 ml.
Cooking steps
Let's prepare the necessary ingredients for making Toffee candies. It’s better to take homemade, full-fat sour cream. If you buy in a store, then take non-powder, with a fat content of at least 20%. It will work great if you replace the sour cream with cream.
In the very first minutes, the sugar will begin to melt and the sour cream will change color. Sour cream is fatty - it will not stick to the sides, but it can burn, so you should not leave the stove, you need to stir periodically, but not constantly.
The longer you cook, the more intensely yellow the mixture will become and become thicker and thicker.
Delicious "Iriski" candies are ready. This is how easy it is to prepare a wonderful treat for the whole family using sour cream and sugar at home.
Bon appetit!
There is now a huge selection of sweets in stores, but many feel nostalgic for the sweets that were sold in Soviet times. And the impressive list of E-additives is alarming, so some mothers try to make sweets at home in order to pamper their babies with healthy sweets, and not with products from chemical laboratories. The favorite dessert of the Soviet era - toffee candies - has acquired a different taste, and sometimes you really want to treat your children to real toffee according to the classic recipe. In fact, preparing toffees is not as difficult as it seems, and those in your household with a sweet tooth will be happy to appreciate the results of your culinary experiments. So, let's try to make homemade toffee candies using different recipes - it's so delicious! 
Subtleties of making toffee sweets
All recipes for making toffee boil down to one thing - milk, cream or sour cream is boiled with sugar, and then mixed with butter and vanilla. Sometimes butter is added to milk before heat treatment, sometimes after - depending on the recipe. Next, the mass is poured into a mold, cooled and effectively cut. In general, toffee is a milky fudge that takes on different textures and flavors depending on the amount of ingredients, cooking time, and temperature.
Iris can be soft, viscous, hard or semi-hard. Sometimes flour, chopped nuts and sesame are added to it to make the mass thicker. Chocolate and vanilla candies, glazed or fruit toffee, and candies with caramel filling are very tasty. For variety, you can flavor this dessert with any spices and additives.
During the preparation of milk fudge, you need to constantly stir the mass, otherwise it will stick to the walls of the dish and burn. For this reason, it should be cooked over low heat, and readiness should be checked by dropping the mixture into a glass of cold water. If the drop turns into a ball, the toffee is ready. It is better to pour the mixture onto a surface made of glass, metal or ceramics, since it is difficult to separate from wood.
The easiest toffee recipe at home
Homemade toffees are sweet, soft, with a pleasant creamy taste, and are not inferior to store-bought sweets.
To prepare them, you will need only three products - sour cream, sugar and vegetable oil. Mix 20 tbsp in a saucepan. l. granulated sugar, 10 tbsp. l. sour cream 20% fat and 5 drops of vegetable oil. Heat the mixture over medium heat, stirring constantly until it acquires the color of boiled condensed milk. Grease a baking sheet, silicone mold or cutting board with oil, pour in the liquid toffee, let the cake harden slightly and cut out small candies with molds. The taste of the resulting toffee is reminiscent of the candies that were sold in the USSR. Try it - you will like it! 
Homemade toffee “Kis-kis”: simple, tasty, beautiful
It turns out that you can make very tasty, sticky and delicate candies with your own hands, and the result will be no worse than in the store. In a saucepan with a thick bottom, mix 200 g of sugar, 2 tbsp. l. honey, 30 g of butter, a pinch of vanillin and pour in all 200 ml of baked milk. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, for half an hour, until the toffee turns light brown, like caramel. Lubricate the ice molds with odorless vegetable oil, put the candy mixture in them and put them in the freezer for 30 minutes. “Kis-kis” toffees look very impressive and beautiful; you can use them to serve a table for tea drinking by inserting skewers or toothpicks into the candies. 
Creamy toffee: a delicate dessert for gourmets
Creamy toffee candies are prepared at home not only from cream, but also from milk in order to reduce the calorie content of the finished dish. Although creamy toffees are, of course, tastier.
To prepare the sweets, dissolve 500 g of sugar in 250 ml of cream or milk and place the saucepan over medium heat. As usual, the mass will have to be stirred during the cooking process, and soon it will begin to thicken and darken. As soon as the milk caramel acquires the color of coffee with milk, it can be considered ready. Remove the toffee from the heat, grind it with 100 g of butter and flavor it with a few drops of vanilla extract. Place the toffee on a greased surface, smooth it out and let it harden, then slice it beautifully and serve. 
Condensed milk toffee: tenderness and sweetness
These most delicate candies melt in your mouth and leave no choice for those with a sweet tooth - you want to eat them endlessly!
Melt 100 g of butter over low heat, then saute 40 g of wheat flour in it until beige. Pour 300 g of condensed milk into the pan and cook, stirring, for 10 minutes. Next, add 200 ml of warm milk to the pan, mix thoroughly and cook until the mixture thickens and turns golden. Place the fondant on a flat surface, let it cool and cut out beautiful candies with molds. You can simply cut the layer with a knife or break it with your hands. 
English toffees for tea
It turns out that the British also love toffee, but they prepare it in their own way. How to make English-style toffee candies? For this we need butter, sugar, corn syrup and almonds. Corn syrup is sold in specialty confectionery stores. It is added to baked goods so that they do not go stale, and fudge is made with it so that it does not become sugary.
Mix 250 g of sugar with 1 tsp. corn syrup, 230 g butter and salt on the tip of a knife. Cook for 5 minutes over low heat, add 90 g of ground roasted almonds and continue to keep the mixture on the fire until it reduces and becomes soft brown. Pour the fondant into an oiled mold, let it harden and cut into pieces. The British serve this dessert with the traditional fife-o-clock along with biscuits and jam. 
Chocolate toffee
This original dessert will appeal to all chocolate lovers - with morning coffee it lifts your spirits and makes life sweeter.
Melt 125 g of dark chocolate in a water bath, separately mix 150 g of 35% fat cream, 3 tbsp. l. honey, 1 tbsp. l. sugar and add chocolate to the mixture. Cook the toffee over very low heat, stirring continuously, for about 12 minutes. Pour the fondant onto baking paper, let it cool, put it in the refrigerator, and then break it into pieces. Chilled candies are easily separated from the paper; their consistency is soft, viscous and tender. By the way, you can use a box of regular chocolates with indentations as molds for toffee. 
Lemon toffee: culinary creativity
Even those who don’t like citrus fruits will like this unusual dessert. The fact is that such toffees have no sourness at all, but the aroma of fresh lemon is present. These candies can be called diet sweets due to the absence of dairy products and oil, so for those who are on a diet, they can be a real salvation.
Dissolve 400 g of sugar in 120 ml of water and bring the water to a boil, remembering to stir so that the syrup does not burn. Separately, dilute 100 g of gelatin in water according to the instructions on the package. When the gelatin has dissolved, mix it with sugar syrup and cook the mixture for 10 minutes. Add 2 tbsp. l. lemon juice. Pour the syrup into the mold; when it hardens, carefully cut it into squares and taste it. Of course, these chewing candies cannot be called classic toffees, but they are very tasty and piquant.
Enjoy your tea!
Candies "Iris"- this is a type of candy that is prepared on the basis of molasses, sugar, butter, condensed milk (see photo).
The name of this type of candy comes from the name of the French iris flower. As history knows, sweets first appeared in Russia in 1901, where they were brought by a confectioner from France, Josue de Mornas. Taffy began to become popular, and then a confectioner noticed the similarity between the candy and the leaf of the plant. Thus, the Frenchman launched a batch of sweets called “toffee”. Naturally, this was just a commercial move, because in France these candies had existed for more than 50 years, only under the name “taffy”.
Types of toffees
According to the production method, toffees are divided into several types: mass-produced and cast. If you don’t like toffee sticking to your teeth, then it’s better to choose the mass-produced type. During the preparation of this type, a viscous mixture consisting of molasses and milk is mixed with crumbs from ready-made candies. Thus, a semi-solid consistency is obtained.
The classification of Iris sweets by consistency is as follows:
semi-solid.
On some candy packages you can see the names “toffee” and “fudge”. These are the same toffees, only with foreign names.
By the way, fudge is toffee with fruits and nuts, which in the countries of the USSR is called “sherbet”.
How to select and store?
There are several basic rules in choosing and storing toffees.
When purchasing, pay attention to the composition of the candies. They should not be made with vegetable fats or fat substitutes. These impurities contain trans fats, which are dangerous to the body.
The composition should be the same as many years ago in the USSR. Thus, high-quality toffee should consist exclusively of the following ingredients: molasses, condensed milk, sugar, condensed milk.
If and the candy wrapper sticks to the candy, this is the main sign that the storage conditions for this delicacy have been violated.
The candy itself should not stick to your teeth, and in addition, it should be colored light brown.
A high-quality product can be stored for three to seven months. If the terms are longer, this means that the composition contains preservatives, and possibly other food additives, such as flavors and dyes.
Benefits of toffees
Iris contains several necessary and beneficial components to keep the body healthy.
Thanks to the vegetable oil contained in toffees, we receive energy to build new cells. Condensed milk is easily digestible, it is rich in amino acids and fats. Molasses also gives energy and lifts your mood.
Toffees may also contain additives, such as nuts. They also have positive properties. For example, they activate mental activity. Therefore, toffee with the addition of nuts will become an indispensable assistant in preparing for exams.
Harm of toffees
Sugar, which provides the body with energy, also has a harmful effect, since with excessive consumption of these sweets, fat accumulates and metabolism is disrupted. Nowadays, many people know that every average person receives more calories than he expends. Therefore, after every candy you eat, you should go for a run, because in this way you will eat something tasty and your body will always be healthy.
Toffee is a healthy candy as long as it is not overused.
DIY cooking at home
Absolutely everyone can cope with making toffee with their own hands at home.
For preparation you will need the following ingredients:
250 ml milk or cream;
40 g butter;
250 g sugar;
3 tbsp. l. honey;
vegetable oil.
First, add butter to a small saucepan, then gradually pour in milk, and add sugar and honey. Then you need to mix everything thoroughly and put it on the stove.
Constantly stirring the mass, cook the candies for half an hour, until the mass takes on a light brown tint. After half an hour, the pan must be removed from the heat and poured into a bowl where it needs to cool.
When the mass has cooled down, you can start creating. If you have special candy or muffin tins at home, you will make the process much easier. But you can have a great time with your children by giving them the opportunity to make their own figures.
After all stages of preparation are completed, the resulting culinary masterpiece, prepared at home with your own hands, is placed on a plate or tray, greased in advance with vegetable oil, and sent to the refrigerator to harden. After an hour and a half, the candies can already be eaten. You will find another recipe in the video below.
There is now a huge selection of sweets in stores, but many feel nostalgic for the sweets that were sold in Soviet times. And the impressive list of E-additives is alarming, so some mothers try to make sweets at home in order to pamper their babies with healthy sweets, and not with products from chemical laboratories. The favorite dessert of the Soviet era - toffee candies - has acquired a different taste, and sometimes you really want to treat your children to real toffee according to the classic recipe. In fact, preparing toffees is not as difficult as it seems, and those in your household with a sweet tooth will be happy to appreciate the results of your culinary experiments. So, let's try to make homemade toffee candies using different recipes - it's so delicious!
Subtleties of making toffee sweets
Now you know how to make toffee candies - as you can see, it’s not at all difficult. When the classic toffee gets boring, you can come up with your own variations of candies. Try adding fried seeds and nuts, dried apricots and prunes, poppy seeds, coconut flakes or sweet spices - cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg - to the toffee. Toffees can be made into healthy sweets if you cook them with honey or cane sugar, adding a minimum of butter. If you come up with your own recipe for this dessert, send it to the “Eat at Home!” website. Let our life be even more delicious! This dessert will come in handy for any, even festive tea party. And with branded tea, your guests will remember this holiday even more. Loose leaf tea has a delicate, excellent taste and fresh aroma, it gives strength and gives a great mood! The teas do not contain artificial flavors or additives. Enjoy your tea!
