Sticky toffee, caramel or fudge: what's the difference?
All three start from much the same ingredients: sugar, milk, fat and usually glucose. What makes them different is how they're cooked and how the sugar behaves as they cool.
It starts in the pan
When you cook sugar with milk, two things happen. Water boils off, so the mixture gets thicker and firmer the longer and hotter it cooks. And the milk proteins react with the sugars, which builds the brown colour and the deep, rounded flavour we think of as caramel.
How far you take the cook decides a lot. Stop at a lower temperature and you keep more water, which gives a softer, runnier result. Take it higher and you get something firmer that holds its shape.
Caramel
Caramel covers a wide range, from pourable sauces to firm, chewy pieces. The common thread is a smooth texture with no sugar crystals. Glucose syrup helps here: it gets in the way of the sugar crystallising, so the caramel stays smooth.
A runny caramel sauce is cooked to a lower temperature and suits fillings and sauces. A caramel made for depositing has to flow when it's warm and set once it's in place, so its recipe and cook are balanced for the line it will run on.
Our glucose caramel and caramel sauces
Toffee and sticky toffee
Traditional English toffee is cooked hotter than caramel, until very little water is left, which makes it hard and brittle. Sticky toffee, the way we make it, sits between the two. It's cooked to keep a soft, slightly sticky body that holds its shape at room temperature. That's why it works so well as a centre inside chocolate: it stays put, and it stays soft to bite.
Our sticky toffee for chocolate centres
Fudge
Fudge is the one where sugar crystals are wanted. It's cooked to a similar range to a soft caramel, and then the sugar is encouraged to form very fine crystals as it cools. Those tiny crystals give fudge its short, smooth texture and let it set firm enough to cut. Fudge makers often help the crystals along by adding fondant, which seeds them.
How to choose for your product
- It has to sit in a chocolate centre: a soft toffee or caramel that holds its shape at room temperature.
- It has to run through a depositor: a caramel balanced to flow when warm and set in place.
- It has to pour, spoon or fill: a caramel sauce.
- It has to be cut or portioned: fudge.
Most of the time the answer comes from how the product is made and eaten, not from the name on the label. If you're not sure, describe what it has to do and ask your manufacturer what they'd use.