Enjoy the best holiday season treat with this easy Christmas Crack recipe that only needs 7 ingredients and creates the best Christmas crack toffee.
With this easy recipe, you can make saltine cracker candy for you and your family, or package it up and give it to friends as sweet and savory Christmas candy holiday gifts.
With the saltiness of the cracker, the chewy toffee mixture, and the melted chocolate, you get the perfect combination of flavors for a Christmas recipe everyone will love.
Remember this is the best time of the year to enjoy all the sweet treats and holiday desserts, be sure to have this simple recipe be one of the dessert recipes you enjoy this holiday season!
Recipe Ingredients:
- Crackers: you will need to have a box of saltine crackers
- Sugar: to get the best flavor use muscovado sugar that you can find at Whole Foods or on Amazon. If you don’t want to buy specialty sugar, you can also substitute muscovado for dark brown sugar.
- Butter: use unsalted butter or omit the salt from the recipe if you only have salted butter on hand
- Salt: using a pinch of salt will help balance the sweetness of this Christmas cracker candy
- Extract: add in whichever vanilla extract you have on hand in your pantry
- Toppings: use chopped quality dark chocolate and chopped toasted almonds
How To Make Christmas Crack Recipe:
- Prepare the base. Preheat your oven to 375 F. Line a 9×13-inch rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Add butter into a saucepan. Melt the butter over medium-high heat. Once melted, add sugar and stir until it is dissolved. Cook the butter-sugar mixture for 3 minutes, tiring occasionally. Remove from the heat and stir in salt and vanilla extract.
- Pour the prepared mixture over saltine crackers. Distribute the butter-sugar mixture with an offset spatula.
- Bake the crackers in the oven for 5 minutes.
- Prepare the topping. Chop the chocolate and set aside.
- Add your almonds to a skillet and toast them over medium-high heat, for 5 minutes. Keep an eye on the almonds so they do not burn. Stir them occasionally so they are nicely toasted on all sides. Chop the almonds and set aside.
- Add the chopped chocolate over the saltine crackers and bake for 45-50 seconds in the oven.
- The chocolate will melt at this point. Remove the baking sheet from the oven and spread the chocolate with an offset spatula.
- Add chopped almonds over the chocolate and allow the chocolate to cool down to room temperature before transferring it into the fridge.
- Cool the Christmas crack for 4 hours or overnight.
- Break into pieces and serve.
Optional Toppings:
- Flaky sea salt
- Mini M&M’s
- Toasted nuts
- Chopped graham crackers
Pro Tips:
- If you cannot find muscovado sugar, use dark brown sugar. The muscovado sugar has a rich flavor and it elevates the Christmas crack.
- Almonds are just a suggestion here, but if you choose any other types of nuts, make sure to toast them. The toasted nuts have a better flavor than regular ones. Toasting nuts are more flavorful and surprisingly crunchy.
- Making butter and sugar caramel can be tricky. Many experience butter and sugar separation. This will occur if you cook the caramel sauce on high heat. We suggest that you cook the caramel sauce on medium-low as stated in the recipe.
Frequently asked questions about making saltine cracker toffee:
This would indicate that you did not cook the sugar mixture long enough or the oven wasn’t hot enough. Next time leave the mixture to cook for another minute or two and be sure to check the internal temperature of the oven.
If the Christmas coffee toffee seems a bit grainy, that might mean that part of the sugar is crystallized during the boiling stage. Be sure to scrape down the sides of the pan to avoid any unwanted crystallization of the brown sugar mixture.
While I won’t say that you need it, I’m sure it may come in handy if you are newer to cooking toffees. It can help avoid the texture of the candy recipe turning out incorrect.
Sure! In this recipe, dark chocolate is used as a topping. So, if you prefer, leave it off, however, it is really tasty with the salty and sweet combination for this saltine toffee recipe.
Muscovado sugar looks similar to brown sugar but is a bit more fine and will look like wet sand and have a darker brown color. It has more molasses in the mixture and gives a great flavor to the Christmas crack candy.
Storage Instructions:
Counter: Place the pieces of the holiday treat into an airtight container or a ziplock for up to a week.
Other Christmas recipes:
- Snickers Cheeseball Recipe
- Grandma’s Holiday Cheese Ball Recipe
- Holiday Cheeseball Bites
- Warm Cranberry Citrus Drink Recipe
Christmas Crack
Ingredients
For the base:
- 30-35 saltine crackers
- 1 cup muscovado or dark brown sugar
- 1 cup butter (unsalted)
- 1 good pinch of salt
- 1 ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
For the topping:
- 10 oz. quality dark chocolate, chopped
- ¼ cup almonds, toasted, chopped
Instructions
- Prepare the base: Preheat your oven to 375 F. Line a 9×13-inch rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Add butter into a saucepot. Melt the butter over medium-high heat. Once melted, add sugar and stir until it is dissolved. Cook the butter-sugar mixture for 3 minutes, tiring occasionally. Remove from the heat and stir in salt and vanilla extract.
- Pour the prepared mixture over saltine crackers. Distribute the butter-sugar mixture with an offset spatula.
- Bake the crackers in the oven for 5 minutes.
- Prepare the topping; chop the chocolate and set aside.
- Add your almonds to a skillet and toast them over medium-high heat, for 5 minutes. Keep an eye on the almonds so they do not burn. Stir them occasionally so they are nicely toasted on all sides. Chop the almonds and set aside.
- Add the chopped chocolate over the saltine crackers and bake for 45-50 seconds in the oven.
- The chocolate will melt at this point. Remove the baking sheet from the oven and spread the chocolate with an offset spatula.
- Add chopped almonds over the chocolate and allow the chocolate to cool down to room temperature before transferring it into the fridge.
- Cool the Christmas crack for 4 hours or overnight.
- Break into pieces and serve.
Notes
- If you cannot find muscovado sugar, use dark brown sugar. The muscovado sugar has a rich flavor and it elevates the Christmas crack.
- Almonds are just a suggestion here, but if you choose any other types of nuts, make sure to toast them. The toasted nuts have a better flavor than regular ones. Toasting nuts are more flavorful and surprisingly crunchy.
- Making butter and sugar caramel can be tricky. Many experience butter and sugar separation. This will occur if you cook the caramel sauce on high heat. We suggest that you cook the caramel sauce on medium-low as stated in the recipe.
Nutrition
Did You Make This Recipe?We’d love to hear your thoughts! Leave a review or a question in the comment section below the post.
Crack?!!! Really? Like Whitney said, Crack is whack. Just no.
muscovado sugar light or dark?
Either one would taste deliciouss in this recipe. You can’t go wrong!
I would like to try this recipe. Can I use olive oil instead of butter? Thank you
We don’t recommend using olive oil in this recipe
The best holiday treat – brought it to the office and it was gone in less than hour!
In the frequently asked questions, the possibility of using an instant read thermometer is mentioned but not any temperature. What temperature would you cook the toffee to if you were to use a thermometer?
You can aim for 250°–265°F or the hard ball stage
I made this once for my grandchildren once and now it is demanded every year. Great treat.
Crackers–salted or unsalted?
We use salted!