A Typical Toffee

A typical commercially made toffee contains the following ingredients  

Either skim or full cream milk is essential although milk powder can be used as a cheaper substitute. 

Originally, this would be milk fat although vegetable fat is now more common. Apart from the cost advantage, a vegetable fat can be tailor-made for a particular application. 

If sweetened condensed milk is not used then milk powder is the most likely alternative. In some cases, milk powder is added to sugar and water to produce a reconstituted condensed milk. One simple reason for doing this is that the plant could have been constructed to use condensed milk. 

This material is used to make whey toffees, acting as a substitute for some skim milk solids. It provides protein for the Maillard reaction and fat emulsification. 

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The sugar confectionery system that most commonly relies on emulsifiers is toffee. A typical toffee has a continuous phase of a high solids sugar syrup with milk proteins present. The disperse phase may be all milk fat, a mixture of vegetable fat and milk fat, or purely vegetable fat. The interface between the two phases is likely to be formed of some of the milk protein and any added emulsifier. 

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