Toffee is one of the oldest confections in British sweet-making, and it has barely changed in over a century. The basic recipe is sugar, butter and condensed milk cooked until the mixture reaches a specific temperature and sets hard. That is all it has ever been. What separates a great toffee from an average one is the quality of those ingredients, how long it is cooked, and whether the person making it has been doing it long enough to know the difference.
This guide covers the main types of toffee sweets available in the UK, the brands worth knowing, and the full Walkers Nonsuch story, which is one of the better origin stories in British confectionery.
How Toffee Is Made
The Basic Process
Toffee is made by cooking sugar and butter together, usually with condensed milk or cream, until the mixture reaches around 140 to 150 degrees Celsius. At that temperature the sugars caramelise and the mixture becomes thick and sticky. Poured onto a tray and left to cool, it sets into a hard, chewy or brittle slab depending on how long it was cooked and how much fat was in the recipe.
The longer toffee is cooked, the harder it sets. A shorter cooking time produces a softer, chewier result. Most individually wrapped toffee sweets sit somewhere in the middle: hard enough to resist crumbling but soft enough to give way after a bit of work. A proper slab toffee, the kind sold with a small hammer to break it into pieces, is cooked longer and sets much harder.
The Difference Between Toffee and Fudge
Toffee and fudge use similar ingredients but produce very different results. Fudge is cooked to a lower temperature and beaten while cooling, which creates a smooth, grainy texture. Toffee is cooked hotter and cooled without agitation, which produces a hard, glassy set. Fudge is soft and crumbles. Toffee is hard and chewy. The two are sometimes confused, but they are distinct products with different textures and different eating experiences.
The Walkers Nonsuch Story
Where It Started
Walkers Nonsuch is the most significant toffee brand in the UK and, conveniently, one that has a genuine connection to One Pound Sweets. Edward Joseph Walker opened a sweet shop in Longton, Stoke-on-Trent in 1894, just around the corner from where One Pound Sweets operates today. He started making toffee on a small scale, selling hard slab toffee that customers would break off and buy by the quarter.
By 1915 his son had joined the business, and by 1922 it had formally become Walker’s Nonsuch. Five generations of the Walker family have been involved in making toffee since. The brand is still in production today and is regarded as one of the oldest continuously operating toffee makers in the country. Read more about why Walkers toffee is called Nonsuch.
Why Nonsuch?
The name comes from Nonsuch Palace, a building commissioned by Henry VIII that was considered so grand it was said there was no such palace like it anywhere. Edward Walker used the same idea for his toffee: he believed there was nonsuch toffee like his in terms of taste and quality. It was a bold claim for a man selling sweets from a shop in Longton, but the brand has been in production for over 130 years, so the argument is hard to dismiss.
The Walkers Toffee Range
The Walkers Nonsuch range covers a wide spread of flavours. The original creamy toffee is the foundation everything else is built on. Beyond that, the range includes liquorice toffee, treacle toffee, nutty Brazil, salted caramel, coffee, banana split and mint. Each variety uses the same base recipe with different additions rather than completely different products. The Walkers Luxury Toffee Selection is a slab format with a small hammer included, which is a proper old-fashioned way to eat toffee and a decent gift option.
Types of Toffee Sweets
Traditional Wrapped Toffees
Individually wrapped toffee pieces are the most common format. Each sweet is a bite-sized piece of toffee, usually in a twisted wrapper, that can be eaten in one or two pieces. Walkers does this format better than most. The treacle toffee has a dark, slightly bitter edge from the black treacle that makes it more interesting than a plain caramel. The nutty Brazil adds whole Brazil nut pieces to a standard creamy toffee base, giving it a different texture.
Toffee Bon Bons
Toffee bon bons are a softer format: a chewy toffee centre coated in a sugar shell, similar to the format of a Malteser but with a chewier core. The sugar coating gives them a slight crunch before you hit the toffee, which creates a two-stage eating experience. They are a pick and mix staple and one of the easier toffee formats to eat in quantity without giving your jaw too much work.
Chocolate Eclairs
A chocolate eclair is a toffee sweet with a hard outer shell and a soft chocolate centre. The shell is made from toffee cooked to a hard crack and the filling softens as the sweet dissolves. They have no connection to the cream-filled pastry of the same name. The chocolate eclair is one of the most enduring formats in British pick and mix, and the Walkers banana split eclair variant is worth trying if you have not had one: the banana flavour works well in the format.
Slab Toffee
Slab toffee is the original format, cooked harder and sold in a large piece intended to be broken into smaller ones. The Walkers Luxury Toffee Selection comes with a metal hammer for exactly this purpose, which keeps alive a tradition that goes back to the Victorian sweet shop. Slab toffee is harder and more brittle than wrapped toffee pieces. It is also more intensely flavoured because there is more toffee per bite.
Liquorice Toffee
Liquorice toffee is one of those combinations that sounds like it should not work but does. The earthiness of the liquorice cuts through the sweetness of the toffee and makes the overall flavour more complex. The Walkers liquorice toffee jar is a 1.25kg format that works out excellent value per piece and suits anyone who goes through them regularly.
Buying Toffee Sweets Online
What Is Available
The toffee range at One Pound Sweets covers the full Walkers Nonsuch lineup alongside Werthers Originals, chocolate eclairs and toffee bon bons. Individual bags start from £1. The Walkers range in particular is available in both small bags and larger jar formats for bulk buyers. Browse the full toffee range for current stock.
Bulk Options
The 1.25kg Walkers Liquorice Toffee Jar is the best value single-product option. For variety, the Luxury Toffee Selection covers four flavours in a single slab format. If you want a mixed toffee selection for a sweet table or event, ordering several individual bags across the flavour range gives more choice without committing to a large quantity of any single variety. Orders over £20 qualify for free UK delivery. Browse retro sweets for more classic British favourites.
Good toffee does not need much to be good. The ingredients are simple, the process is straightforward, and the brands that have been doing it for over a century are still the ones worth buying. Walkers Nonsuch started on a street corner in Stoke-on-Trent in 1894 and is still going. That kind of longevity is not an accident.
Shop Toffee Sweets at One Pound Sweets
Browse the full range of toffee sweets from £1 a bag, including the complete Walkers Nonsuch range. Free UK delivery on orders over £20.