Cooking For Engineers

[Gareth]

I made this a few months ago, doing it live on web-cam with quiet a few people watching me.

I was fortunate enough to be following a thread on another forum regarding the uses for Birch sap. Amongst other things, Noya, wine and beer were suggested.

Contractors felled a Birch tree at work as part of a new development. So I decided to collect some of the sap oozing from the stump. I managed to collect over 23 litres, where as my friends had only managed 2-3 litres on proper tapping sessions. I asked for suggestions of what to do with all of my sap, and Birch sap toffee was suggested.

Being a 45 year old widower I had no real idea on how to make a decent toffee. So I goggled toffee recipes and was lead straight to the English toffee making thread here on Cooking for Engineers. Well, it sort of made sense. I am an engineer, I love cooking (especial for my new lady friends), and I wanted a toffee recipe. I followed the Hardball toffee recipe, substituting the Corn oil with Birch sap syrup.

Here are a few photos of the progress. unfortunatly I forgot to take photos of the toffee in the trays, or a display of the toffee lumps after removing it from the refridgerator and the trays.

The ingredients that I used were. 3 litres of birch sap syrup, 1.5 liters of single cream, 1 kilo of white granulated sugar, 1 Kilo of demerrara sugar, 1 kilo of soft brown sugar. 3 kilos of unsalted Butter, 3 grams of ground sea salt, 100 ml of filtered and boiled tap water, a big dash of vanilla essence.

I made 3 variations of the toffee, one with each of the different sugars Aiming for, but not quiet achieving a hardball toffee. However the results were very tasty and very popular with my friends.

All the ingredients, ready to go.

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Straining the Birch sap, before reducing it to a syrup.

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The Birch sap gently simmering and reducing into a syrup.

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