Saltine Cracker Toffee
This saltine cracker toffee is incredible simple and yet dangerously good, like a little kitchen miracle. You'll find yourself with your hand in the toffee jar all season long!
🔍 Recipe At-A-Glance: Saltine Cracker Toffee
- 🕰️ Prep Time: 15 minutes, plus 2 hours of chilling time
- ⏰ Cook Time: 15 minutes
- 🍫 Flavor Profile: Tender, buttery, rich, and chocoalte-y. The perfect sweet and salty dessert!
- 🎉 Good For: Christmas food gifts and holiday cookie exchanges.
- 🧡 Difficulty: The easiest candy you'll ever make.
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🧡 Why You'll Love This Recipe
Hi friend: There are certain delicious treats that seem to really be associated with the holidays, and this saltine cracker toffee is one of them! While it's perfectly delicious and appropriate all year long, this simple toffee is synonymous with the Christmas season.
Here's why you'll love this recipe:
- So simple: This is a supremely easy Christmas candy to make (even easier than my buckeye balls or the caramel you make for my caramel popcorn)! No need for candy thermometers or other fancy equipment...this recipe is as no-fuss as it gets.
- Perfect texture: This cracker toffee has the wonderful sweet and salty flavor combo going on with a perfect texture: a little crunchy, but not so hard you'll need to hit up the dentist after you enjoy.
- A great gift: Everybody loves a homemade gift, and this toffee is no exception. It makes a great gift in a jar!
🍫 The Ingredients You Need
- Chocolate chips: You'll need milk or semi-sweet chocolate chips, because the recipe relies on the milk solids to keep the chocolate pliable. Dark chocolate doesn't have the same moisture content as milk chocolate, so it's more brittle, making for a chocolate flake mess when breaking up the toffee and eating it. Stick with the milk or semi-sweet chocolate, and save the dark chocolate for my nanaimo bars or peppermint hot chocolate!
- Saltines: While you can use low-sodium crackers, I recommend using regular saltine crackers for this toffee recipe. This saltine toffee has a delicious contrast of sweet chocolate and caramel and salty crackers. Using reduced-sodium crackers will still work, but it won't have the same flavor.
- Toffee bits: For the most basic version of this candy recipe, you just need four basic ingredients: saltine crackers, unsalted butter, brown sugar, and chocolate chips. But for extra tasty toffee, I recommend also adding toffee bits!
Make sure to check the recipe card below for the full ingredients list, along with quantities and my expert tips and tricks.
🔁 Variations & Substitutions
- Change the crackers: While the saltine crackers fit perfectly in the pan and have a great salty flavor, go ahead and feel free to experiment with any other kind of cracker. Graham crackers make for a sweet-as-can-be toffee that reminds me of s'mores.
- Club crackers: Want to try out Ritz crackers in the recipe? You might want to go with Keebler Club Crackers, which have similar flavor and texture to Ritz, but are rectangular, so they'll fit in the pan better.
- Add what makes your heart sing: I love this toffee as simple as can be, but if you are looking to spice it up a bit, you could add any of the following: chopped nuts, holiday sprinkles, or flaky sea salt (wait until the chocolate is mostly cooled before you add this one).
- Toffee swirl: Replace half of the chocolate chips with peanut butter chips, butterscotch chips, or white chocolate chips...then swirl them together!
🥣 Saltine Cracker Toffee How-To
Step 1: Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil, and grease the foil. Be sure to choose a tray that has sides, and that the sides are lined with foil too. Otherwise, you'll be cleaning up a giant mess. Preheat oven to 350°F.
Step 2: Spread saltines in a single layer on the cookie sheet. You want the crackers to be so close together that they are touching, but not overlapping.
Step 3: Heat butter and sugar together in a medium pan, and bring to a boil. Cook for five minutes.
Step 4: Pour the brown sugar mixture over the saltines, and bake for 6-8 minutes. At this point, the caramel should be bubbly.
Step 5: Sprinkle chocolate chips over the hot caramel. They will start to melt immediately-spread the chocolate into an even layer with a spatula.
Step 6: If you are opting to use toffee bits, sprinkle them on top of the chocolate. Let the toffee cool to room temperature, and then move the whole pan to the fridge to chill for at least 2 hours. Overnight is even better!
You want your saltine cracker toffee to cool completely in one large sheet before you break it into pieces. Removing them from the baking sheet before they've had a chance to fully chill will result in an ooey-gooey mess.
Step 7: Place a large cutting board on top of the baking sheet, and flip the whole pan-toffee-board sandwich over. Remove the pan, peel off the foil, and break the toffee into chunks.
🙋🏻♀️ Saltine Cracker Toffee FAQs
My favorite topping is toffee bits, because it really emphasizes the crunchy toffee flavor. But it is also great with chopped nuts, holiday sprinkles, or other chopped candies!
Note: Many folks know this holiday toffee recipe as "Christmas crack," but this name can make light of serious issues like drug addiction. Instead, we are calling this candy "saltine cracker toffee," but it is the same recipe you know and love.
After you've broken your saltine cracker toffee into chunks, store it in an airtight container in the fridge. You can use a plastic container, a zip-top bag, glass containers, or even metal cookie tins. It makes a great simple gift when wrapped up with a pretty ribbon!
Although saltine cracker toffee is best kept in the fridge, it can be stored for a few days on the counter. Just be careful that the room it's in doesn't get too hot, or you'll end up with melted chocolate everywhere!
👩🏻🍳 My Expert Tips & Tricks
- Use the foil: Truly, do NOT skip the step of lining the cookie sheet with aluminum foil and greasing the foil. Otherwise, you are going to end up with a sticky mess that is impossible to clean up!
- Pick the right pan: To avoid a mess in your oven, make sure the baking sheet you lay your crackers in has high sides. This will stop any melted caramel from running over as it bakes.
- Stick with the chocolate chips: While I'm normally all about chopping up your own chocolate, I'd recommend using chocolate chips here. The chocolate is sprinkled on top of the hot caramel, which means it has to be in small enough pieces that it will quickly melt on contact. It's much less work to use chocolate chips. Keep it simple!
- Keep it separated: To reduce the risk of a mess, separate the layers of saltine cracker toffee using pieces of parchment or wax paper. This way, if your toffee does happen to melt, it won't cause the pieces to stick together.
- Make ahead: Saltine cracker toffee will last in the fridge for up to three weeks and still taste fresh and delicious. So if you find yourself with a few minutes of free time, whip up a batch and store it in the back of your fridge. Now you have a sweet and salty treat to feed your next round of holiday guests!
- Freeze it: I've had decent luck freezing the toffee in an airtight container for up to 3 months. I just recommend freezing it flat first, and the transferring the pieces into the container once solid so they don't freeze together.
🍪 More Festive Treat Recipes:
If you tried this saltine cracker toffee or any other recipe on my blog, please leave a 🌟 star rating and let me know how it went in the comments!
📖 Recipe
Saltine Cracker Toffee
Ingredients
- Cooking spray
- 1 sleeve of saltine crackers
- 1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks)
- 1 cup dark brown sugar
- 2 cups semisweet or milk chocolate chips
- 1 cup toffee bits i.e. Heath Bits, optional but highly recommended
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a 10" x 15" baking sheet with sides (AKA: a jelly roll pan) with foil-do not skip this step! Spray the foil liberally with cooking spray.
- Layer the saltines in a single layer at the bottom of the lined baking sheet. Make sure to butt the crackers up closely to each other to make a good base. You may not use all the saltines depending on the size of your baking sheet.
- In a medium sized saucepan, combine the butter and brown sugar. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, and cook for about 5 minutes. No need to be super precise here.
- Pour the butter mixture over top of the saltines in one even layer.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 6-8 minutes, or until the caramel is bubbly.
- Immediately sprinkle the chocolate chips over top of the hot caramel. As they melt, use a spatula to spread the chocolate into an even layer.
- If using the toffee bits, sprinkle evenly on top of the melted chocolate. Let the candy cool until room temperature, and then move to the fridge to chill for at least 2 hours, but preferably overnight.
- When chill time is up, place a large cutting board over top of the baking sheet, and then flip it upside down so the toffee comes out on the cutting board. Peel off the foil layer, then break the toffee into large chunks for serving.
Notes
- If you aren't using the toffee bits, flaky sea salt is a great way to top the toffee. Just make sure to let the chocolate cool until it's just slightly tacky before adding the salt.
- I love dark chocolate, but this isn't the place to use it. Chocolate with higher cacao content tends to become brittle in this recipe.
- Make sure your baking sheet has sides and that they are also lined with foil to save yourself from a huge oven mess.
Nutrition
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It wouldn't be Christmas without a tin of this cracker toffee on the table at my parents' house! It's the best combo of salty and sweet with a delectable crunch.