Christmas cookies may be the holy grail of holiday baking classics, but don’t forget that handcrafted sweet confections such as candy plays an important part in Christmas traditions. Christmas parties are known for their once a year extravagant decorations, crafts, and sinfully rich desserts.
Christmas Crack is so easy to make that I will make two batches and divide them into gifts and save the rest for our annual family parties.
Old-Fashioned Christmas Cracker Toffee
Made from scratch, this Christmas Crack recipe is deliciously tasty. The saltine crackers act as a shortbread cookie crust while the homemade caramel toffee is made with butter and sugar and pairs perfectly with semi-sweet chocolate. Truly a Christmas candy recipe to make on a budget.
Toffee, like caramel and peanut brittle all, have something in common. They are made with basic ingredients like butter and brown sugar. While these classic brown sugar and butter candy confections feature similar ingredients, they are actually heated and cooked to different temperatures to achieve their signature texture. When sugar is heated to high enough, it boils. When sugar boils, it changes into a soft ball. If sugar continues to cook at high temperatures, it takes on different textures when it cools.
How to Serve Christmas Crack
When making this cracker candy for holiday parties, I like to serve the cracker toffee bars in tins and in cupcake liners. Cupcake liners work great to contain different shaped treats that may be delicate or flavors you don’t want to mix with other treats. It also helps to create perfect portion bite-size samples so everyone can try it without overindulging.
Edible gifting is really a popular tradition. Giving food as gifts has been around a long time. In fact, when I was young, our family would stock up on caramel corn and flavored popcorn tins and they were given as gourmet gifts to neighbors, friends, coworkers, teachers, and long-distance relatives. Even more, my nana would use the best ingredients like real butter instead of margarine for the special Christmas Day celebration. While these surprise popcorn tins are making a comeback, making your own homemade assorted candies and cookies is much more preferred today. Every year, I have friends and family lining up waiting for my Christmas-crafted treats. Truth is, I haven’t even begun to crack the list.
Christmas Crack Toppings
- Sprinkles
- Oreos
- Crushed cookies
- candy canes
- Heath bites
- mini marshmallows
- Andes chocolate mints (baking bit)
- caramel candy popcorn
- Dried fruits like cherries, apricots
- Glaze dried fruits like classic fruit cake toppings and cherries
- M&M’s
- Freeze Rolos, peanut butter cups, snickers, milky ways, and chop up into small pieces and sprinkle over the top
MAKING A CHRISTMAS DESSERT PLATTER PARTY TIP
Use variety and do make sure desserts, candy, and cookies are in small bite-size pieces with a cupcake liner to separate different sweets. I like to serve 6-7 varieties of cookies like these classic Peanut Butter Kiss Cookies, Sugar Cookie Cutouts, Reese’s Hideaway Cookies, Gingerbread Cookies, Strawberry Thumbprint Cookies, and Russian Tea Cakes.
Next to the cookies, be sure to include easy little Christmas candies like these Peanut Butter Buckeye Truffles, and Christmas Corn Flake Wreaths all served in a cupcake liner. Cut sweet loaves of bread like Cranberry Orange Glazed Bread, pastries, and cakes in little pieces and serve in cupcake liners, too.
Christmas Crack {Best Saltine Cracker Toffee Candy}
Ingredients
- 40 saltine crackers
- 1 cup + 2 tbsp butter
- 1 cup + 2 tbsp packed light brown sugar
- 12 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips
- ½ tbsp Christmas sprinkles
- ¼ cup chopped pecans or heath bits
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F.
- Line a large rimmed baking sheet with foil. Spray very well with cooking spray. Line saltine crackers into rows and columns.
- In a medium saucepan, bring butter and brown sugar to boil for 3 minutes.
- Very slowly and lightly drizzle the hot caramel toffee over the crackers while spreading it across the crackers.
- Place in oven for 5 minutes.
- Microwave chocolate chips in the microwave on power level 3 for 7 minutes. Don't use a silicone spatula to stir it as this can be a common source of moisture that will ruin the chocolate. TIP: If you use Ghirardelli chocolate chips (do not use nestle), you can take the sheet pan out of the oven and sprinkle it with chocolate chips then return to oven for 3-5 and smooth it.
- Immediately sprinkle melted chocolate with sprinkles, chopped nuts like pecans or almonds, or other cake toppings like toffee bits, I like to sprinkle the top with a little sea salt.TIP: You can customize the topping and create different flavors divided by sections. As an example, use crushed oreos on ¼ the top, use pecans on ¼ the top, use peppermint bark or candy canes on ¼ the top, and use sprinkles on ¼ the top.
- Allow chocolate to cool for several hours or overnight.
- Cut or break Christmas candy into pieces.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutritional information is only an estimate and it’s accuracy is not guaranteed to be exact.
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