Salted Hazelnut Toffee

The perfect sweet and salty snack! Salted hazelnut toffee bark layers together toasted hazelnuts and melted dark chocolate over homemade toffee. 

Simple to make and super satisfying!

Salted hazelnut toffee bark makes for great homemade gifts, especially during holiday season.

These delicious treats go by many names. You may know them as English toffee, caramel bark, chocolate covered praline bark.

Essentially, this sweet treat is a layering of hard toffee, luscious chocolate, and chopped nuts.

Hazelnut toffee is absolutely delicious on its own. However, they become even more amazing when topped over vanilla ice cream or chopped and tossed into fresh made buttery popcorn!

Easy English Toffee Ingredients

This recipe only requires a handful of ingredients. Therefore, it is important to use high quality ingredients to ensure the hazelnut toffee has the best flavor.

• Hazelnuts : Also known as filberts. Roast and skin whole or halved hazelnuts. Then, roughly chop. Swap in your choice of nuts such as pecans, walnuts, almonds, pistachios, or macadamia nuts.
• Chocolate : The recipe works best with dark chocolate or semi-sweet chocolate. The toffee needs the slight bitterness of dark chocolate to offset the overall sweetness of the treat.
• Butter : Ideally, it is better to use unsalted butter. That way, you are able to control the amount of salt in the recipe.
• Sugar : Use plain, regular granulated white sugar. The sugar will be melted and heated until caramelized.
• Vanilla : Opt for high quality pure vanilla extract, vanilla paste, or scrape the insides of half a vanilla pod.
• Maldon Salt :This gourmet salt is known for its clean flavor and large crunchy flakes. You may also use fleur de sel or other salt sea flakes. This type of salt is far less salty than traditional table salt, iodized salt, or kosher salts.

Tips for Success

• Here’s my NUMBER 1 tip- get a proper kitchen thermometer!

A reliable thermometer takes away all the guess work. You can clearly see when the sugar mixture is done cooking.

I recommend this candy thermometer (also labeled as deep fry thermometer). It’s great for candy and caramel making, as well as for deep frying!

I also highly recommend this Thermapen. I use it for candy making, grilling, bread making, and more.

• Have your mise-en-place ready

Mise-en-place translates to “everything in its place.”

It is important to have all your ingredients and components ready before you begin cooking the toffee.

Dark Chocolate vs Milk Chocolate

This recipe works best with dark chocolate or semi-sweet chocolate.

Toffee is simply a mixture of butter and sugar. As such, it is rich and sweet.The toffee needs the slight bitterness of dark chocolate to offset the overall sweetness.

You may certainly use your choice of chocolate. Milk chocolate and white chocolate does work.

However, keep in mind that the resulting English toffee will be much, much sweeter with milk chocolate or white chocolate.

Swap in your favorite nuts or toppings

Customize the English toffee with your choice of nuts. Chocolate and hazelnut pair wonderfully together (think Nutella!)

Any nut works. Chocolate is great with pecans, walnuts, almonds, pistachios, macadamia nuts, etc.

Make a tropical version by topping the toffee with macadamia nuts, sweetened dried coconut flakes, and some chopped dried pineapple pieces.

A summer time road trip version would be great topped with granola and dried fruits.

A winter holiday version could include chopped peppermint (or candy cane) along with chopped almonds.

More Homemade Food Gifts

• Caramel Pecan Bark
• Peppermint Bark Marshmallow Cereal Bars
• Chocolate Marshmallows
• Dark Chocolate Almond Joy Truffles