Christmas Crack (2024)

FAQs

Why did my Christmas Crack not get hard? ›

Why is my Christmas Crack chewy? Being a little chewy is normal and makes for a better mouthfeel than super hard, break your tooth caramel but if it's TOO chewy it can be a bit sticky. Make sure you heat your brown sugar mixture to 280ºF (138ºC) or let it boil for 5 minutes before removing it from the heat.

What did I do wrong? Either you didn't use real butter (see above) or you didn't fully boil the butter and brown sugar mixture. This is the only tricky part of making Crack. You have to bring the butter and brown sugar to a good boil and keep it there for THREE MINUTES.

Chocolate chips are designed to resist melting, and some are less prone to melting than others. If your chocolate chips don't seem to be melting, pop the saltine toffee back into the oven after it's been turned off. Let the toffee sit in the oven for a couple minutes to speed up the melting process.

Then, make sure the entire mixture comes to a rolling boil, not just the edges of the pan. Why is my saltine toffee chewy? If your saltine toffee, or Christmas crack, is chewy, it's because the chocolate hasn't fully set yet. Try popping it in the fridge for 15 minutes to firm it up.

As the toffee cools and the molten sugar crystals become solid again, they are attracted to the 'seed' forming new lumps of tiny crystals – hence the grainy texture. This can also happen if the toffee is stirred, or agitated, after it has begun to boil or on cooling (as happened with this pink-tinted toffee).

You can make Christmas crack up to 5 days before you plan to serve it. Store it in the fridge, then break it into pieces and enjoy.

Gritty Christmas Cracks happens when the sugar has crystallized. This usually happens if the temperature gets too high (too hot). Another way this happens is if sugar crystals form on the side of the pot while cooking and then get added to the candy–they'll cause a chain reaction of crystallization.

Homemade chocolate bark will last in an airtight container for 2-3 weeks. I recommend storing it in the fridge to ensure that the chocolate doesn't melt!

Christmas Crack is a sweet and salty treat made with saltine crackers covered with toffee, baked, and then topped with semi-sweet chocolate. Sometimes called saltine cracker toffee, it is as easy to make as it is addicting, so watch out! I love to serve it with other Christmas cookies on a Dessert Charcuterie Board.

Adding a tablespoon of coconut oil or vegetable oil while microwaving helps the chocolate melt more smoothly and makes it the perfect consistency for dipping! The caveat here is that once cool, the chocolate won't set up quite as hard as it did to begin with due to the added fat content.

How do you fix chocolate that won't melt? ›

Funnily enough, it's super simple. First boil some water. Second, very slowly, as in 1-2 tsp at a time add in the boiling water and whisk the chocolate vigorously until the mixture is smooth again. The hot water will essentially melt the clumps back to a liquid consistency.

The simple answer is that there is too much moisture in your candy. One or more factors could be contributing to this problem. In hard candy making, it is important to cook all the water out of the sugar/corn syrup/water mixture.

Essentially, brown sugar hardens when moisture evaporates due to aging or improper storage. But hardened sugar is still safe to eat and use—you just have to soften it back up to a usable texture. If your recipe has the sugar dissolving or melting into a liquid, you can actually use the hardened stuff without issue.

“Soda crackers today are more commonly called saltines. But they originally got their name from the fact that they contain baking soda. “The first crackers were simply flour, water and salt. They were not leavened with yeast — as for bread—or baking soda — as with biscuits.

Your Christmas Crack may have turned out grainy due to sugar crystallization caused by undissolved sugar crystals or stirring the mixture too vigorously while it was cooking.

The problem is that crystals of sugar were re-introduced into the liquid candy. This will cause your candy to crystallize and become grainy. To prevent this, (stove-top method only) wipe down the inner sides of your pan a few times with a wet pastry brush while your candy is boiling.

If your toffee doesn't have a hard texture (where you can snap it in half) you did not cook it long enough. Again, the 5-minutes is just a guide. Cook it until it is the color of a brown bag.

Although the challenge may sound trivial, it is difficult because the crackers quickly exhaust the saliva in the mouth. Even though six saltines can fit in one's mouth at the same time, and a minute is plenty of time to chew, the resulting mass of crumbs is still difficult to swallow with a dry mouth.