What to make

Caramel, Toffee & Butterscotch – Know The Difference

The main difference between caramel, toffee and butterscotch is the type of sugar and cooking time

For many people, caramel, toffee and butterscotch are the same thing, but they really aren’t.

There’s a good chance that because of their very similar tastes, you never even gave the difference between caramel, toffee and butterscotch a thought. All three are used as ice cream toppings, chocolate filling and stand-along candy, and they are hard to tell apart.

But we’ve got answers for you and we’ll teach you to tell them apart and set the record straight once and for all.

Let’s start of with the difference between caramel and butterscotch.

Caramel is a pretty genius blend of granulated white sugar, heavy whipping cream, butter and vanilla. It’s easy to make, you just mix the ingredients and cook for about 10 minutes.

Making butterscotch is exactly as easy, mainly because it is the same recipe, but you you change the white sugar for brown sugar. Butterscotch is a brown sugar caramel.

Although butterscotch was originally a hard candy itself, thus the suffix scotch (in reference to the cutting method), toffee is an even harder candy.

Toffee is made with the exact ingredients as butterscotch, but it is cooked for much longer. Once the the toffee is ready, at the hard-crack stage, it means that there is a 99 percent concentration of sugar in it.

Now that you know, you’re probably disappointed to find out that there really isn’t that much of a difference between them. But on the bright side, you now know how to make any of the three sweets.

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