Vegan Butter For Vegan English Toffee

Attempting Vegan English Toffee with Earth Balance Butter Sticks/Spreads

It’s a family tradition to make English Toffee for friends and family around the holidays. The recipe is simple:

1 Cup of Butter, or Margarine, or Vegan Butter
1 Cup of Sugar
1 Cup of Almonds
Enough Chocolate to cover the slab of toffee.

After lots of stirring and a little bit of magic it ends up looking like this:

But this year I removed Dairy from my diet so I’ve been attempting to find a replacement for the butter and I don’t want to use a hydrogenated Margarine. The recipe works just fine with Margarine, personally  I would rather limit my Hydrogenated oil intake. Granted this is not a health food by any means so i’m not trying to make it healthy, just not full of trans-fats!

Which leads to Earth Balance Vegan Butter sticks

These sticks of non-hydrogenated vegan butter work really well making English Toffee, in fact as well as real butter, except for one thing. There’s an aftertaste that well just odd, I really can’t describe it! It’s like one of the oils didn’t like being heated very hot or something. I have no idea what its from and I would like to know what it is… After the first batch was inedible I decided to try one of Earth Balance’s Vegan Butter Soy Free Spreads

The Soy Free Spread turned out really well! No Aftertaste! I just wish it wasn’t in spread form as this tends to allow the oils to separate at high temps, which wreaks havoc on your hands and the stove top and very hot oil is slopped around the pan. I have the burns to prove it! So working with it was nothing like the sticks, much more difficult and I don’t recommend other’s trying to use it to make toffee at least the way I make it, all ingredients in a pan and stir on medium heat until the almonds start to toast! The finished product tastes great and I’ll post a final pic of the Vegan English Toffee when I finish adding chocolate to the other side.

Here’s a photo of the Earth Balance Soy Free Spread Toffee as the Chocolate bars start to melt.

Does anyone knows why Earth Balance Vegan Sticks have an aftertaste, I’ve noticed it in other recipes as well? Do I have a bad box? Will Earth Balance ever make a Soy Free Butter Stick?