IBBY’S METAPHYSICAL ENGLISH TOFFEE

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, rack in the middle position.

16-ounce box Club Crackers*** (Mine were made by Keebler)

1 cup butter (2 sticks, ½ pound)

1 cup brown sugar (tightly packed)

2 cups milk chocolate chips (12-ounce bag)

2 cups chopped pecans (salted or unsalted, it really doesn’t matter)

Line a 10-inch by 15-inch cookie sheet with foil. If you have a jellyroll pan, that’s perfect. If you don’t, turn up the edges of the foil to form sides.

Spray the foil with Pam or other nonstick cooking spray. (You want to be able to peel it off later, after the candy hardens.)

Line the pan completely with Club crackers, salt side up. Cover the whole bottom. (You can break the crackers in pieces to make them fit if you have to.) Set the cracker-lined jellyroll pan or cookie sheet aside while you cook the toffee mixture.

Hannah’s 1st Note: You don’t need a candy thermometer to make this candy.

Combine the butter with the brown sugar in a saucepan. Bring it to a boil over medium high heat on the stovetop, stirring constantly. Boil it for exactly five minutes, stirring it constantly. If it sputters too much, you can reduce the heat. If it starts to lose the boil, you can increase the heat. Just don’t stop stirring.

Pour the mixture over the crackers as evenly as you can.

Hannah’s 2nd Note: I start by pouring the mixture in lines from top to bottom over the length of the pan. Then I turn it and pour more lines over the width of the pan. Once the whole pan is crosshatched with the hot toffee mixture, I pour any that’s left where it’s needed. If it doesn’t cover the crackers completely, don’t worry—it’ll spread out quite a bit in the oven.

Slide the pan into the oven and bake the toffee at 350 degrees F. for 10 minutes.

Remove the pan from the oven and sprinkle the milk chocolate chips over the top. Give the chips a minute or two to melt and then spread them out as evenly as you can with a heat-resistant spatula, a wooden paddle, or a frosting knife.

Sprinkle the chopped pecans over the top of the chocolate and refrigerate the pan.

When the toffee has thoroughly chilled, peel it from the foil and break it into random-sized pieces.

Hannah’s 3rd Note: Ibby used her toffee as a reward for high quiz scores. Once you taste it, you’ll know why I can still recite at least one stanza from each of the Metaphysical Poets.

Chapter Five

The headlights of Hannah’s cookie truck glared against the row of single-pane windows marching across the front of the squat red brick building that housed the Winnetka County Sheriff’s Department. It was a fairly new structure, built with county money, and the windows, one to each office, didn’t open. This made it more energy efficient, according to county government guidelines. Regardless of the season or the outdoor temperature, the inside was maintained at a politically correct sixty-eight degrees.