National Almond Buttercrunch Day

When: June 29

Almond buttercrunch (or English toffee) is a candy made by cooking butter and sugar to the hard crack stage, pouring it thin, and coating it in chocolate and toasted almonds. The chemistry is exact, the window for perfect texture is narrow, and the result is one of the most satisfying holiday candies you can make from scratch.

Almond buttercrunch is a candy that's essentially pure technique — toffee, chocolate, and almonds in perfect proportion.

Almond buttercrunch is a candy that's essentially pure technique — toffee, chocolate, and almonds in perfect proportion.

In 1923, two candy makers in Tacoma, Washington — Harry Brown and J.C. Haley — were trying to develop a candy that could survive being shipped long distances without breaking or going stale. They cooked sugar and butter to the hard crack stage, poured it over toasted almonds, coated both sides with chocolate, and rolled it in ground almonds. The result was Almond Roca, named for the Spanish word for rock. They packed it in pink tin cans sealed with a vacuum to prevent moisture from softening the brittle candy. The vacuum tin was the innovation as much as the candy. Brown & Haley's Almond Roca was one of the first American candies designed from the beginning to be exported — and the pink tin did what the candy alone couldn't, giving it an identity that survived translation across cultures. Today Almond Roca is sold in over 80 countries. The candy that solved a shipping problem became a global gift-tin staple. The science of buttercrunch is the science of sugar at extreme temperature....