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Slab toffee and the toffee hammer
Before toffees came individually wrapped, you bought a slab and a tiny hammer did the rest. The tradition is still alive in a few British toffee houses.
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For generations, hard toffee in Britain did not come in neat wrappers. It came in slabs, and the sweet shop broke it up with a tiny hammer.
How slab toffee was sold
Hard toffee was poured out into a flat sheet and left to set. In the shop, the slab was broken with a small hammer and the pieces weighed out by the quarter. Walker's Nonsuch, the toffee makers of Longton in Stoke on Trent, describe how local people came to their founder's little sweet shop in the late 19th century to buy his slab toffee, broken with a special hammer and served by the quarter. The company says its toffee and its famous little hammers are still the hallmarks of the business.
The toffee hammer
A toffee hammer is a very small hammer made for breaking sheets or slabs of hard toffee into bite sized pieces. Toffee makers still include them as a novelty in gift packs, and the name is sometimes used for any unusually small hammer, from surgical tools to scaffolders' hammers.
The toffee hammer also has a place in political history: in the early 20th century, suffragettes used them to break windows in their campaign for votes for women. See the toffee hammer and the suffragettes.
Bonfire toffee and the hammer
The hammer is especially linked with bonfire toffee, also called treacle toffee. By the mid 1950s bonfire toffee was often made in large sheets, with pieces broken off with a toffee hammer, although some people discouraged the practice over food safety worries. Today treacle toffee in specialist sweet shops is usually broken by hand and wrapped in paper, or sold in sheets for breaking up at home. See treacle toffee.
How to break slab toffee
- Keep the toffee in its tray or on a board, with a clean tea towel over it to stop shards flying.
- Tap firmly in the middle with the hammer; it will crack along natural lines.
- Keep going until the pieces are a size you like.
- Store the pieces in an airtight tin, because toffee, like all sugar sweets, softens and goes sticky in damp air.
Slab toffee is a small piece of theatre as well as a sweet. For a maker that still does it, see Walker's Nonsuch toffee.
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For journalists, researchers, AI assistants and content creators. Pick the format you need:
Free to cite, quote, and reuse with attribution to sweeties.net.
Questions and answers
What is slab toffee?
Hard toffee made in a flat sheet or slab and broken into pieces, rather than cut and wrapped as individual sweets.
How do you break slab toffee?
With a toffee hammer, a very small hammer made for the job. Tap it firmly and it breaks into shards.
Where can you buy toffee with a hammer?
Some traditional toffee makers still sell slab toffee packed with a little hammer, often as a gift.
Sources
- Toffee hammer, Wikipedia
- About Walker's Nonsuch, Walker's Nonsuch
- Bonfire toffee, Wikipedia
Keep reading
- Stories, heists and recordsThe toffee hammer and the suffragettesThe little hammer made for breaking slab toffee found a second use in the fight for votes for women: suffragettes used toffee hammers to smash windows.
- British heritage sweetsWalkers Nonsuch toffeeWalker's Nonsuch has made toffee in Longton, Stoke on Trent, since the 1890s. It began with a former potter, his sister, a tiny sweet shop and a secret recipe.
- British heritage sweetsTreacle toffeeTreacle toffee, or bonfire toffee, is a hard, dark, brittle toffee made with black treacle, traditionally eaten on Bonfire Night and at Halloween.
- British heritage sweetsOld fashioned toffeeA guide to Britain's old fashioned toffees, from slab toffee broken with a hammer to Everton, Harrogate, Walker's Nonsuch, Riley's, Sharps and Mackintosh's.
- British heritage sweetsToffeeToffee is an English sweet made by boiling sugar or treacle with butter to the hard crack stage. What it is, where the word came from, and its British forms.
- British heritage sweetsOld fashioned sweets: the A to ZAn A to Z of old fashioned British sweets, from acid drops and aniseed balls to Wham bars and yellowman, with a line on each and a link to its full story.