Food from the Magic Faraway Tree, Toffee Shocks

I've been trying to think of new ideas for the blog. And one idea was to do something with a book theme.

I read The Faraway Tree books (Enid Blyton) to the girls (well, mainly Elizabeth) a while back and they went down well. I think the repetitive nature of the books is great for younger children, it almost feels like a book of short stories, one for each land at the top of the tree! Elizabeth got to know the characters really quickly even if she didn't always remember what had happened last time in the story.

So I'm going to try to reproduce some of the food that is described in the books.

Elizabeth picked the Toffee Shocks to do first.

"Jo... munched a peculiar piece of toffee which seemed to get bigger in his mouth instead of smaller... Jo's toffee was now so big that he couldn't say a word. Then it suddenly exploded in his mouth, went to nothing, and left him feeling most astonished."

Well, as far as I know it's not possible to make toffees that get bigger and then explode into nothing, but I did decide to experiment with toffee and popping candy.

I followed this recipe for making the toffee. To be honest, it covers Bessie's homemade toffee description. It is the "best, sweetest, chewiest toffee" on it's own.

The problem with popping candy is that it's not so effective once it's been exposed to humidity and moisture. So I tried a few things.

• a corner of popping candy at the bottom of the baking tray, so the toffee covered it
• pressing the popping candy on the top of the set toffee
• squishing some toffee flat then putting the popping candy on top, and rolling it up so that the candy is in the middle of the toffee

The last method seemed to be the best one. Although the candy doesn't pop as well as it would, I think that it gives a degree of *shock* to the toffees. Plus it wasn't an unpleasant texture in the toffee and it added a variety of flavour to the toffees.

My first attempt at making a 3D tree. This is something I will develop for the girls to do themselves, with a template. Next time I will use cardboard instead of paper!

The toffee shocks were the ones wrapped in baking paper. The unwrapped ones are the *Bessie* versions mentioned above.

Coming soon, Pop Biscuits and Google Buns.

I would love some comments, suggestions or ideas. Or just say hello to let me know you've been reading.