I came, I saw, I conquered!

So after my disaster with the apple soup, I want to go forwards with a new challenge. After a tiring day I am not sure if I have the ingredients ( or the energy) for a Mrs Beeton master piece. Flicking through the BoHM I find Everton Toffee. Sugar, water, butter and a few drops of lemon, everything I have in the cupboard and sounds simple......right?

1lb of sugar, 1 teacup of water, 1/4 butter and 6 drops of lemon essence.

The sugar and water go into a pan until the sugar dissolves. Beat the butter into a cream and then add it to the mixture on the stove and keep stirring till set. Ok, I seem to get by with the dissolving - I seemed to remember hearing from one of the many cooking shows on TV that this should not be stirred. I add the butter and stir for the best of 40 mins. (Mrs B says this should take 18-35) but my mixture just seems so bright and yellow and liquid - and my gut feeling is that it is wrong. Toffee surely should be light brown? My instinct is to want to turn the heat up but I am scared the sugar will burn and I will have something that tastes vile - not sure I could take another disaster this quickly. So I end up taking the mixture off the heat and backing away from it - beaten!

Dam her! Mrs B says nothing about colour, temperature or tells me what I should be seeing. I wonder if this is what modern celebrity chefs have done to me - a recipe follower - void of any real cooking knowledge! And surely this is the reason Mrs B appealed to me - she was going to be my hard arse teacher, was she not? But then it hits me - its the opening line of the book "As with the commander of an army, or the leader of an enterprise, so is it with the mistress of the house" - so in this case it's 'master' but the meaning is still so prominent and no wonder this is her opening sentence. Surely her message here is 'GROW A PAIR!' Commanders and leaders don't retreat like beaten dogs - they are brave and go forth and conquer! This is it - the toffee mixture is back on the heat - I am going to follow my gut instinct - the heat is wacked up! The pan transforms into a magical scene as a froth rises, and so does my heart - if this over flows or spits me in the face I am going to be scarred but I stir, fighting it back down - HAHA, suddenly I am George slaying a toffee dragon, I am William The Conquerer at the Battle of Hastings! Suddenly the melted butter goes from sunshine to a gold and it is then that I take it to dish to cool, and having scraped the last bit from the pan I can't help but get the urge to take it to my mouth - in the few short seconds it takes to get from pan to my face it already forms a hard shell and....OOOOOUUCH FUCK!!! Ok, blow it first..........and ......... wow, its hard, then chewy and buttery and .....and......and.....and then Mrs Beeton made me cum!