What is the difference between toffee and caramel? For some reason I have stumbled into a land that likes toffee. But sometimes they have caramel. Let's dicuss.
As far as I can tell, toffee and caramel have the same make-up, just a different consistency, with toffee being thicker than caramel. For example, if you get a Cadbury caramel or Galaxy carmel, you'll be greated by running insides. There's a candy bar called Toffee Crisp, but as I've never actually had one I can't really tell you what it contains, but I imagine it's less gooey.
Right now on the desk behind me there is a tin of Quality Street chocolates leftover from some surveys some people were doing at a local college. That is to say, there is a tin of individually wrapped chocolates of slightly varying flavor. This includes 1 caramel flavor and 3 toffee flavors. But I say, isn't that just really 3 flavors of caramel?
You see, I think the English just like to use the word toffee because either they don't know how to pronounce caramel or don't like the idea of a word whose pronunciation is varied. I mean, chocolate comes in different levels of thickness but we still only use one word to describe it! I just say come on people, how can you have both a toffee nut and a caramal latte on other at Starbucks! Are there separate vats of toffee and caramel syrup? I somehow doubt this. Anyways, just needed to get that off my chest!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
You are such a tease--I just had to research the difference between toffee and caramel, and found a scientific (sort-of) explanation here.
Somewhere I read that in the U.S. toffee is crunchy while caramel is soft and chewey, but in the U.K. what we call caramel they call toffee.
I don't think I particularly care as long as it comes with good chocolate.
There is probably some difference which I don't really know but my rule is that if it is a risk to your teeth fillings then it is toffee; caramel does not pose a dental risk (in the short term at least).
But I think Quality Street are a bit more liberal with the interchangability of toffee and caramel as names. Those ones are the ones that end up getting left till the end anyway. Perhaps this Christmas I will study the issue further...
Post a Comment