# Rileys toffee rolls

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## Summary

Riley's Toffee Rolls were made in Halifax from 1907, dropped in the 1990s, and revived in 2008 when the recipe turned up in a family cookery book.

## Description

Riley's Toffee Rolls are a Halifax toffee that came back in 2008, when the original recipe turned up in a family cookery book.
A mother's recipe
Riley's Toffee Rolls were launched in 1907 by Riley Brothers (Halifax) Limited, founded by two brothers, Fred Riley and John Herbert Riley. The toffees were made to a recipe given to them by their mother, at the brothers' factory on Hopwood Lane in Halifax. That building is now a McVitie's site.
Halifax was a toffee town: it was also the home of Mackintosh's, the makers of Quality Street. See John Mackintosh, the toffee king of Halifax.
Sold on
In 1953, after John Herbert Riley died, his surviving brother sold the company to William Nuttall. After a series of takeovers it ended up under Kraft, and the toffees were made at the Callard and Bowser factory in Bridgend, Wales.
Dropped for mints
In the mid 1990s the owners decided to stop making Riley's Toffee Rolls, so that the factory could make more Altoids mints instead. For a while, it looked like the Riley's toffee roll would join the long list of sweets you can no longer buy.
The recipe in the cookery book
Then, in 2008, Freya Sykes found an old recipe book, Economical Cooking, which had been given to her by her granny, Ella Riley. In the front was a handwritten recipe, passed to Ella by her uncles, Fred and John Herbert Riley. It was the recipe for the original Riley's Toffee Rolls.
After securing the rights to the name, the family relaunched the toffee in 2008. The new Riley's Toffee Rolls are made to the old recipe, adjusted to a slightly softer texture to suit modern tastes.
Why toffee recipes matter
Toffee is simple in principle: sugar or treacle cooked with butter until it reaches the hard crack stage, around 149 to 154 °C. But small differences in ingredients, temperature and timing change everything, which is why a family recipe on a single page could bring back a taste people remembered for decades. For more on toffee, see our guide to toffee and old fashioned toffee.

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