This Homemade Almond Roca is an easy English toffee with almonds, covered with dark chocolate. No candy thermometer required. Perfect for holiday gifts!
I have a severe weak spot for almond roca during the holiday season. I can resist fruitcake, all manner of Christmas cookies, puddings and mince pies.
But when it comes to almond roca, will power abandons me. (That will be an extra hundred situps for the next two weeks, please.)
My mother’s friend Myke brought over a delicious batch a week ago, which lasted, um, an hour? A phone call with a rave review prompted her to bring us a second batch along with the recipe. Thanks Myke!
Homemade Almond Roca Recipe
- Prep time: 5 minutes
- Cook time: 20 minutes
Use an inexpensive chocolate such as Hershey’s. It has low cocoa butter content. If you use a premium chocolate with a high cocoa butter content, unless you temper the chocolate first (look up directions online), the cocoa butter may separate into white streaks as the melted chocolate cools.
You can use other kinds of nuts such as pecans or macadamia and white chocolate.
Do not attempt to make this on a humid or rainy day. Do not double the recipe, make one batch at a time.
Ingredients
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/4 cup water
- 1 Tbsp light corn syrup
- 1/2 lb butter (2 sticks – NO substitutes!)
- 1/2 lb. slivered almonds (2 cups)
- 1/2 lb. bar of regular Hershey’s dark chocolate (7 oz okay)
Method
1 Melt butter with sugar, syrup and water in a pan (such as a large non-stick frying pan) on medium to medium-high temperature. Stir continuously with a wooden spoon.
When butter is melted, add the almonds.
2 Cook until the mixture turns a warm amber color, and the boiling sounds like a crackle: When mixture comes to a rolling boil, set your timer for a minimum of 10 minutes and keep stirring (no more than 15 minutes). The mixture will thicken and turn darker in color. The almonds will roast.
Keep stirring and cooking until you hear it crackle. If you don’t cook it long enough it will not harden, so keep stirring and listen for the crackling sound.
Elise’s note: I have found it very hard to distinguish between the boiling sound and the crackling sound in this recipe. A better guideline for me is by color. When the mixture turns a warm amber color, at about 11 or 12 minutes into the boiling, that’s the time to pour it out. Wait too long and it will burn.
If you try to make this, please read all the comments listed below. It’s actually trickier than one would think.
3 Pour mixture out onto a large cookie sheet: When the mixture crackles, pour the mixture out onto a large sheet pan or cookie sheet and spread it as thin as possible with a fork.
4 Spread chocolate over the top: While the almond mixture is still hot, break up the chocolate into chunks and distribute it over the almond mixture and let it melt. Spread it evenly on the top.
5 Cool to room temp: Let the almond roca cool to room temperature. When cool you can lift the whole thing off the pan and break into small pieces.
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