Treacle toffee

Today we decided it was a good day to make treacle toffee.

It was rather memory provoking as I remembered making it with my dear grandmother. We made it as per WI recipe which was unusual for my grandmother who used to.make her own recipes up. One time she didn't have enough butter to make a chocolate cake so she used the rum butter she made for easter! The cake was lovely apparently.

Anyway, the toffee. Well with all ingredients in the pan including the top of the milk I questioned what the milk was for, grandmother had no idea but it was in the recipe so we put it in.

The recipe said 'test for set' in cold water. "What does that mean"? I asked. Dear grandmother told me. The recipe didn't say how, it just said do it and dear grandmother knew what to do and so do i now. It's something you pass on as I discovered when my teenage daughter asked if she could help me make it.

"Why do we put milk in? What does that do?" And i repeated Grandmothers reply from a few, well, a lot of years back! What does "test for set" mean? The reply echoed my dear grandmother from years ago. My daughter will be able to pass on that information in the future.

One thing is certain after this little exercise, i can't cook a chicken but I make a pretty good treacle toffee.