Butter Toffee Popcorn Recipe - Brown Sugar Food Blog (2024)

FAQs

What is the difference between caramel and toffee popcorn? ›

Ingredient Differences

Toffee is a product of heating sugar or light corn syrup and butter at 300F. Therefore, it tastes like light buttery, and sugary candy. The sweet buttery taste balances well with the saltiness of the popcorn. On the other hand, caramel has dark corn syrup, milk or cream, and water.

The best caramel corn is a masterful nugget of salty, sweet, crunchy deliciousness. It delivers an impressive hit of rich, homemade caramel flavor with just enough salt to tame the sugar. Bad caramel corn is too sweet, too salty or entirely lacking in caramel flavor.

My favorite part about this Tajin popcorn recipe is its simplicity and flavor! The fiery and savory flavor is super easy to achieve, and you don't even need any fancy ingredients or equipment to make it.

Toffee vs Butterscotch

While butterscotch is cooked to a soft-crack stage, toffee is produced by allowing that same butter and brown sugar mixture to reach the hard-crack stage. Butterscotch tends to be chewy and pliable; toffee is brittle and more breakable.

Toffee – the hard, sweet candy – is an old-fashioned treat, so you might not hear the name very much around modern candy shops. But this classic candy is an enjoyable delight that bursts with flavor at each bite. What is toffee, you ask? Basically, it's hardened caramel (more on that later).

Combine melted butter, paprika, lemon pepper, salt, garlic powder, onion powder, and cayenne pepper in a small bowl; pour over popcorn and stir until it is somewhat evenly coated.

Microwave the butter until it melts; about 30 seconds if whipped and 1 minute if cold. Place the popcorn you just popped into a bowl. Take out butter and pour over the microwave popcorn. Toss the popcorn to allow the butter to coat it evenly.

In a small saucepan, bring butter, sugar, 1/8 teaspoon salt, and 2 tablespoons water to a boil, stirring constantly. Working quickly, drizzle popcorn with sugar syrup, and toss. Spread popcorn evenly on prepared baking sheet. Bake, tossing occasionally, until golden and shiny, about 40 minutes.

Give it some time to cool. If it's still tasting soggy after 1–2 hours of cooling at room temperature, you may have under-baked the caramel corn. 1 hour in the oven is usually plenty. Additionally, be sure to cook the caramel on the stove for long enough.

Which caramel popcorn is best? ›

Cretors Cheese & Caramel Mix

If you're not up for investing in one of those huge cans of Chicago mix, as it's known, this is the best caramel corn/cheese popcorn mix you can buy. First of all, the popcorn puffs are massive. The cheesy popcorn is good. It's nice and savory.

Mexican street corn popcorn is our version of elotes in popcorn form. Corn on the cob is a popular Mexican street food and elote just means corn cob.

What is Tajín seasoning good on? Tajín seasoning is often sprinkled on sliced fruit and vegetables, and it's also used as a garnish for esquites, a creamy corn dish made with mayonnaise and Cotija. You can add a dash to fresh mango, watermelon or pineapple, or try a pinch on jicama or cucumber for a refreshing snack.

The difference between caramel and toffee is greater, as caramel has a more liquid consistency and is usually pure sugar (it doesn't contain butter or flour). Still, the taste of caramel, fudge, and toffee is relatively similar, as they are all made from mostly sugar (as well as butter in the case of fudge and toffee).

Caramel corn or caramel popcorn (toffee popcorn in the UK) is a confection made of popcorn coated with a sugar or molasses based caramel candy shell that is normally less than 1mm thick. Typically a sugar solution or syrup is made and heated until it browns and becomes thick, producing a caramelized candy syrup.

Toffee nut incorporates that delicious candy into a sweet syrup. It is almost like a combination of caramel and some kind of nuts, and boy, is it tasty. The nutty flavor can come from almonds, hazelnuts or pecans and creates a depth to the flavor of coffee drinks and other tasty beverages that you add it to.

When it comes to butterscotch and toffee you've got a lot of the same ingredients. They also use butter, vanilla, and heavy whipping cream, but it's the sugar that differentiates these two from caramel. While caramel uses white sugar, both butterscotch and toffee use brown sugar.