Grandma Maher's Christmas Toffee

She always put it in a large, glass pie plate, the 10 inch Pyrex one but I use a 7 X 11 glass pan. It's easier to make the sling (see the no-bake cheesecake) and neater to cut into square pieces without getting a bunch of weird triangles.  Make it at least 1 month before you want to give it; hide it (or you'll eat it all yourself) and age it -  it turns into a soft, crumbly goodness!

3 C  brown sugar (the lighter coloured one)

1 C (8 oz) butter
1 C  corn syrup (again the light coloured one if there's a choice)
1 can Eagle Brand Milk - the original stuff!
Combine and mix in  large, heavy- based pot, like a Dutch oven. The whole time, you need to be stirring constantly so it doesn't burn. Over medium heat (#6 on my ceramic cooktop), once it comes to a low boil (about 5 minutes), turn to low (#1) and continue stirring constantly - you don't want it to burn. I set the timer for 25 minutes once it starts to boil and continue to stir - if you have a candy thermometer, we're looking for just under 250F, or almost the hard ball stage - when you drizzle a teaspoon of hot mixture into a clear measuring cup of very cold water, it immediately forms a string and quickly hardens - don't go past this as you will never be able to cut it...
Pour into a well-buttered pan and refrigerate overnight.
Take out and warm to room temp to cut into squares, about 1 inch - Grandma was more generous, but I like the smaller size. Wrap in waxpaper squares or 5 to 6 inch square foil candy wrappers.

As I was making this, a test batch for my niece's (photo at left - Grandma and Lauren, 1981), wedding  in September, I recalled my mom's stirring instructions. You had to go around the outside of the pan and then make a figure-eight through the middle a couple of times and repeat the outside and over and over. We had plenty of kids -there were 10 of us (black & white photo above - Marnie, the baby, yet to come and Mike is missing...) waiting to take a turn when the current stirrer got tired. It did seem to take forever for the toffee to be the right colour - Mom didn't have a candy thermometer and relied on the colour to be right before she would do the test of dropping it in the cold water. We were willing to stir because we all wanted to be the kid on hand to test the dropped, cooled piece. Sometimes it would be overdone (too hot and it gets too brown, I think) and then there was no cutting the toffee. It was too hard, like glass and had to be broken into shards. Either way, we kids loved it and it was one of our family Christmas traditions. All her grandchildren remember her Christmas toffee and now, I'm the grandma making the toffee.