Pumpkin spiced toffee

Hello!
Hope you enjoyed yesterday's foray into salsa, we'll be repeating it with a different recipe in the near future. In the mean time I want to share a treat with you that is very easy, doesn't require many ingredients and everyone will think you're an amazing chef when you bring it to work or to a social gathering. This is something I've come up with all my own, though I'm sure there are other recipes out there because this is too yummy for no one to have thought of yet.
Last year around this time Matt and I made a trip up to Pennsylvania just for giggles and I found not only my families historical home (sadly closed by the time we got there...), a silly town called Intercourse,  but also some really nice Amish shops. Many of these are commercialized so I'm not sure how authentic they were, but they had some amazing treats! One of the delicious snacks I brought home was a pumpkin spiced brittle. It was fabulous but the more I looked into brittle the less I wanted to make it. The other part of this story comes from about 5 years ago when I got into making caramel to go over a delicious flourless chocolate cake I make. One day I got distracted and didn't put the cream in and instead of caramel I got toffee! Hello serendipity! To complement this, I started pouring it over Dole coco-covered almonds. Talk about YUM! You can still do this using just the toffee recipe without the spices (or with...) or the pepitas (aka pumpkin seeds).

To sum up, this recipe is the marriage between a delicious treat from the Amish and me being blonde and not paying attention. It takes maybe 20 minutes to make so its super speedy and great to share!

Ingredients:
1 1/2 c. Sugar
6 Tbs Butter
1/2 tsp Cinnamon
1/2 tsp Pumpkin pie spice
1/4-1/2 c. pepitas (pumpkin seeds)

Line a cookie sheet with foil and spray with Pam (or any other non-stick spray)

Place sugar in a sauce pan and heat on medium-high stirring constantly until the sugar has caramelized and is a bubbly liquid.

Plain white sugar in a big pot.  you want a fair amount of head room because it will bubble up when you add the butter

I like using a wooden spoon because unlike metal, it does not conduct heat so you do  not get uneven heating

The sugar is getting kind of clumpy here and you'll see some melted sugar on the bottom

More clumps. It starts to look like rock candy around this point. Keep stirring!

Some of the chunks are getting brown, so the sugar is beginning to caramelize

Now it really looks like rock candy. Getting closer!

Starting to melt more and bubble

Liquid with chunks

Looks like my chunky apple sauce, almost melted!

Only a few chunks left

Melted AND caramelized!

Add in the butter and stir until incorperated

Bubble bubble toil and trouble...

Add in Cinnamon and Pumpkin pie spice and stir until incorporated

Pour toffee onto foil lined cookie sheet and sprinkle pumpkin seeds on top. Use a spatula to incorporate them into the toffee if you'd like.

Once the toffee has cooled, whack it on a table a few times to break it up or break pieces apart by hand.

Pretty easy, huh? And so darn tasty! Its one of those recipes that is very simple, has few ingredients but is a really great crowd pleaser. I was looking online and supposedly you can melt the butter and sugar together at the same time (they did 1 c. sugar to 1 c. butter) and cook it until the sugar has caramelized and the temp reaches ~300 F. You're welcome to try that way as well with their ratios of sugar and butter, but my way doesn't require a candy thermometer. So it all depends on how precise you want to make your toffee. Either way you decide, do try this and share! It's good by itself, or you can crunch it up and serve it over a nice salad (like the candied walnuts or pecans in a strawberry salad) for Thanksgiving dinner.
Happy eating!