I always view toffee as being the slightly serious cousin to the decadent, indulgent fudge! Perhaps it's the simplicity of the ingredients contrasted with the care that must be taken to produce a quality sweet. Essentially you boil sugar (or molasses for a darker more pungent toffee) along with butter – sounds simple? Anyone who has tried making the stuff at home will tell you that it really is not that easy. Sugar wants to crystallise – giving more of fudge texture than the unctuous chewiness we are after, so don't over work your toffee. Easier said than done when trying not to waste the last sticky strands of lurking in the bottom of the pan!

Another problem is the heat you are using, toffee boils at about 300 to 310°F and the boiling hot sticky liquid is not easy to get off the skin. The heat has to spread through the ingredients evenly – no metal spoons please. Take great care not to over cook your mix – there is a short space between caramel and burnt toffee! I have never worked out how, when making toffee, quite so much of the house becomes sticky – surely no-one wandered off into the conservatory in the middle of the boiling?

Wales Christmas holiday 'Toffee Evening' tradition had 'toffee pulling' as the peak of an evenings entertainment. The cooked mixture would be poured onto a greased slab (sometimes the hearth stone – adds a whole new meaning to 'Cinder Toffee') and then, when just cool enough to handle, would be 'pulled'. Hands would be buttered (adding to the butter already in the toffee) to make sure the toffee did not stick to them, and then pieces were stretched (or pulled) away from the main slab. Twisting these now golden pieces of toffee was a skilled process!

Honeycomb Toffee is an exciting mixture of chemistry and confectionery. Brittle to bite, tingly on the tongue this type is usually found enrobed in chocolate to protect it from damp. Have you ever seen the mad frothing when vinegar is added to baking soda? OK, do this whilst blending with hot viscous toffee and the ensuing bubbles of carbon dioxide will be trapped for ever in what is also known as cinder or sponge toffee.

Hammer Toffee contains no real hammers! Instead this brittle toffee, made in shallow trays, was sold with a small metal hammer to break into manageable pieces. You could not bite a piece off without running serious risk to your teeth!

Sadly the 'toffee glue' of my child hood days was named for it's sticky texture and golden colour not it's taste or ingredients (but all us kids optimistically tried it anyway). However I do have happy memories of bonfire toffee, a real seasonal marker of bonfire night, the crispy rock hard stuff rather than soft and pliable kind.

Look at the shelves in any decent sweetshop, Toffee with raisins and/or nuts, soft, hard or crispy toffee, with or without chocolate centres or coating. Wrapped, loose, in trays - such a versatility (even sugar free varieties) ensure a toffee to suit all tastes.