Homemade “Christmas Crack” Toffee
Want an EASY Christmas treat?
The holidays are approaching! Soon it’ll be time to make all the yummy holiday treats – including ADDICTING cracker toffee (affectionately known as “Christmas Crack”)! It’s a rich and buttery treat to make during Christmas, and it also happens to be super simple to create at home. Serve this at holiday parties, or make this as a fun treat to share as homemade gifts.
There are so many versions of Christmas Crack!
I have shared my grandma’s Almond Roca recipe in THIS previous post, and that’s what I usually make. You can change up the add-ins to include crushed candy canes, pretzels, mini marshmallows, or white chocolate chips. The options are endless!
Let’s make festive Christmas Crack with M&M’s!
Today I’m sharing a similar version to the Almond Roca I usually make, but I’ll be using festive Christmas M&M’s instead of nuts. You can either use saltine crackers or graham crackers (today I’m team graham cracker)! This idea is so easy, and you can make several batches with different nut or candy combinations to fit your cravings.
Hip Tip: To avoid sticking, I used a 16×12 sheet pan covered in foil and sprayed with non-stick spray.
Easy process and easy ingredients!
This method starts by covering the bottom of a baking sheet with crackers and then boiling lots of butter and brown sugar. That bubbly mixture gets spread over the crackers, baked for 5 minutes, and then topped with chocolate chips. The chips will then melt and spread nicely over the toffee. The M&Ms get sprinkled on top.
When it sets up, you’ll break apart the “Christmas Crack” into pieces to serve. YUMMY!
Homemade "Christmas Crack" Toffee
yield: 24 SERVINGS
Graham cracker toffee with M&Ms is a delicious holiday treat and a chocolate lover's DREAM!
Ingredients
- 1 and 1/2 sleeves graham crackers (about 14 long crackers)
- 2 sticks of butter (1 cup)
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 12 oz. bag chocolate chips
- 1 cup M&Ms in Christmas colors
- sprinkles in Christmas colors *optional
Directions
1
Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees. Prep a sheet pan with foil, and spray with non-stick spray. Line the bottom of the sheet pan with a layer of graham crackers – you may need to break crackers into pieces to get them to fit.
2
On the stove, carefully bring butter and brown sugar to boil for about 3 minutes – do NOT allow mixture to burn. Stir often. Pour mixture evenly over the crackers and then bake in the oven for 5 minutes at 400 degrees.
3
Sprinkle chocolate chips around the top, and spread until they melt on top of the toffee layer. Sprinkle M&Ms and sprinkles over the top and press gently into the chocolate. Refrigerate for 2 hours or until hard. Break into pieces to serve. Store leftovers in an airtight container. Makes about 24 broken pieces.
Addicting as usual!
The M&Ms make this treat look super festive and cute, and then, of course, it’s DELICIOUS! I love the crunch from the cracker with all the chocolate. I mean, this is holiday baking at its BEST. Such a fun tradition to make with your family, too. I love it!
Up Next: FREE Printable Christmas Bucket List
I think an important part that you don’t touch on is that you need to use good butter for this. Anything caramel or toffee requires a higher quality butter or the flavor will be dull.
Most people I know who have made this complained that it wasn’t very good. But when I asked, they said they used the cheap butter that is always sitting in their fridge.
Which butter do you suggest using? I really want to make this for my hubby.
Try Kerrygold Irish butter 🙂
Kerrygold butter is amazing.
I keep a local brand (American Beauty) or Land o Lakes stocked in my freezer for baking. Just don’t use stick margarine, like Country Crock or Imperial! blech!!
Ok thanks for the tip! We used butter from Costco and enjoyed. Which butter do you recommend?
Costco butter is the best! I usually get the unsalted one so you can control how salty you want your food to be. Thanks for the recipe!
MY Grams would only use land o lakes butter for baking and special occasion items.
I’ve been making this for several years and it tastes amazing when you use club crackers (the ones in the green box). They already have that buttery flavor, which just adds to the great toffee taste!
Oh how awesome! Love that idea – thanks Theresa for sharing.
Christmas “crack”??? are you serious? As someone who has dealt with a kid with a drug problem the use of “CRACK” as a joke or something funny in a recipe is NOT FUNNY. Crack is a KILLER DRUG – it kills addicts and makes addicts kill others. It is not funny to use it to show your candy recipe is addicting. You can use another word. I am so sick of people using the word “crack” in a GOOD term. It is not good. It is a drug and a bad one. I will not make any recipe or share it that promotes Crack as a funny or term to show how good your food is. WHen I hear the word “crack” it invokes bad memories – not ones of eating chocolate candy. Sorry to put a damper on your day but this is a fact. And I know others out there feel the same way because I’ve seen other posts on other recipes too.
They didnt come up with the name…. it’s a variation of a recipe that’s been around forever. It’s a play on works… the treat cracks into pieces and is addicting to eat. Oh yeah I should also mention I’m a former addict to crack and this has never bothered me… 😒
Maybe it’s called Christmas Crack because you have to crack the smaller pieces off the large chunk **shrug**
That is exactly why it is called Christmas Crack-it’s been around for years-has nothing to do with the drug.
I feel your frustration. I was taken back last year when I went to a family gathering, and my super religious mother thought it was funny and ok to laugh about crack being addictive. If you come up with another name for it, I would love to hear it. I think it sounds yummy, but I personally am not comfortable referring to it as crack. Hope your son is in a good place.
You can call it toffee crunch.
How about Christmas Crackle
I think you could just call it cracker toffee.
I’ve made this from allrecipes and they call this recipe Chocolate Brittle.
Seriously?! The name of the toffee sounds like the least of your problems. H2S didn’t name it- that’s what it was named and you crack it apart. Lighten up!
I thought it had to do with cracker too maybe because it’s cracker toffee, but thanks for your feedback. Definitely didn’t mean to offend.
Seriously? This website has done nothing but promote savings and family fun. I’m sorry but you need to lighten up – stop acting like the entire world is out to offend you. YOU are the one making it offensive, not anyone else. I, too, have family members that have drug issues and it never offended me. Grow up and stop trying to make everything around you so politically correct when it wasn’t even offensive to begin with. And to the ladies at Hip2Save that WORK SO HARD to bring us all joy and lots of savings, GOD BLESS YOU. Can’t wait to make my Christmas Crack and enjoy!!!
Christmas Crack is is where it’s at. You don’t have to give into being offended. I think I like the word. I have some drug addict close relatives right now that I hope will stay alive awhile longer, but I don’t mind the word. It wasn’t directed to YOU and YOUR family. You are prolly more offended than the average crack user. Everything has to be so PC already. Like someone suggested, just think of it as short for ‘cracking brittle’ ‘Christmas Crack’ is where it’s at.
I understand that the word “crack” is a trigger word for you. I think we all need to be mindful/respectful of how some words may trigger bad memories for someone else. While we may see a word or phase as innocent, for someone else it brings pain.
Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I think that you need therapy. If coming across a single word in the English language is so deeply triggering to you, then you haven’t learned to properly cope w/ your feelings about your child’s drug addiction and that is a much bigger problem than the word “crack” being used to describe a harmless recipe.
I agree, imagine this person getting this upset to a random person in the grocery store…
Came here to say exactly this. Blows my mind that so many people are saying to just lighten up. No, they didn’t choose the name, but there’s literally no reason they couldn’t change it. Maybe the name didn’t come from the drug reference, but the wording in this article certainly implied that.
And no one ever even said they were “triggered”. There are just some topics that really aren’t appropriate to make jokes about. Is making a joke about addiction really more important to you than the mental wellbeing of the people around you?
Wow, I know its hard sometimes but jumping to conclusions and getting offended is became so common lately. Perhaps we could all just take a moment and really think things through if we may be taking things the wrong way. I am guilty myself which is why I suggest it.
The crack is because it cracks apart.
You don’t have to give into being offended, by the word Crack. People please learn the meaning of a work before jumping into conclusions.
Crack is not really the drug but the nickname for cocaine in it’s smokable form. In the early to mid 80s when cocaine smoking became a think, they nicknamed it ‘crack cocaine’ bc of the crackling sound that it makes when smoked. Who’s to say that ‘they’ should have used such a generic name like crack to nickname a drug? No one, it just happened. Who’s to say that Christmas Crack wasn’t around before Crack Cocaine? I’m sure people have been making this for years and call it crack bc of the crackers that are used.
What came first, the chicken or the egg. Stop with the ‘I’m offended by everything’ attitude when it’s not it’s not an offensive topic.
Here we go again…..
**Play on words
I’ll be making this with the pumpkin spice M & M’s I found on the Halloween clearance aisle yesterday.
That is so smart!! Great idea for Fall too!
I make this with great value butter from Walmart and it’s fantastic! Definitely hard to stop with just one piece!
Thanks for sharing Lauren!
Lina, please share your almond roca recipe!
If you click on the words Almond Roca in the recipe the link pops up: https://hip2save.com/recipes/homemade-almond-roca-easy-holiday-treat/
I’ve never had this before, looks pretty good. I’m not a big toffee fan tho, so hopefully it’s more chocolate like Lol. My aunt makes a killer peppermint bark, I might ask her to make this for Christmas this year. Thanks for the informative Christmas treats post 🙂 🙂
Oh yum!! That sounds wonderful. Thanks for stopping by ❤️
I love this stuff–whatever your family calls it! I’m interestec in using “good butter” to make it even better. I love making it because I can do it way ahead of time since it keeps really well in the freezer. Usually by the end of the Christmas season I am completely sick of it because I constantly sneaking little broken bits. Definitely a Christmas tradition at this house!
Lina, quick question. Do you use regular size chocolate chips or the mini ones .? I’m still learning when it comes to baking. TIA.. this looks so yummy. Keep up the good work and God bless.
I just used regular but mini work work I’m sure 👍 Thanks so much ❤️
Thx guys .😊
The mini chips will melt faster so you can spread it. Those are the ones I use.
Oh that’s a great tip!
? How long does this stay fresh?
I think a few days in a container, and longer if in the fridge or freezer. Here’s a helpful article I found. https://www.bhg.com/recipes/how-to/bake/how-to-store-homemade-cookies-and-candy-to-stay-fresh/
Never thought type of butter affected it and we use plain saltines. So yummy…I make it for christmas presents and everyone loves it
Oh fun- thanks for sharing!
a hint of the holiday taste… break up candy canes and sprinkle it on top before you refrigerate… that’s how I like it1
Yes! Love that idea Holly!💡
This sounds wonderful! You caught my attention when you wrote “Almond Roca”. I can’t wait to try this!!
Oh thanks Susan! Enjoy 🙂
It’s really good when you make it with saltines
Perfect! Thanks for sharing!
This looks fantastic and easy. I really appreciate you sharing the recipe. I’m sorry if people get offended by the name. I am quite certain you meant no disrespect to anyone. Everyone has a tough day once in a while. You all do such a wonderful job of making this site positive, useful and fun. I applaud and appreciate what you do. Thanks to your entire staff and have a wonderful thanksgiving.
What a sweet comment. Thanks so much for reading and for your support. ❤️
Does it matter if you use light brown or dark brown sugar?
They can be used interchangeably depending on your personal preference. Dark has more molasses is all. I’d use what you have on hand. 👍
As usual, you rock Lina!
Thanks Jo-Ann!! You rock too for visiting today!
Do you happen to have a keto version of this? Please? Pretty please??
Yes!!! Similar https://hip2keto.com/recipe/keto-christmas-crack-pecan-toffee/
Do you use the regular semi-sweet chocolate chips, or milk chocolate ones?
I personally think you can use either. I use what I have on hand which is usually semi sweet.
I made this for the first time and the button of the Graham crackers got a little burnt. Can I salvage this? I hate to waste it
Don’t use margarine – it ends up being mush!
Oh no! Thanks for sharing this helpful tip, Kirsten!