Toffee Hobby Turns Into Sweet Success

In the Chicago suburb of Northfield, a springtime Saturday morning has a distinctively balmy feel. The town’s well-kept, expansive homes show the usual signs of the season: budding azaleas, recently uncovered rusty patio furniture and rumbling lawn mowers.

The leisurely weekend routine of yardwork sandwiched around telecasts of Chicago Cubs’ games was disrupted recently when a tour bus clumsily maneuvered in front of the Prescott family home on Sunset Ridge. As the bus finally located a parking space along the narrow two-lane residential street, out tumbled 17 food journalists from around the nation.

The stop was one of several during “Chocolate Day,” a tour sponsored by the Chicago Sun-Times to showcase cottage-size business ventures attempting to raise the confectionary consciousness of Northern Illinois.

Despite the popular frenzy over nougats, butter creams, praline swirls and the like, a day filled with chocolate truffles can quickly become an endless series of sugar dollops. Only so much expert debate on the meltability of semisweet versus milk chocolate can be absorbed and appreciated. However, the stop in Northfield was special because of both the product and personalities involved.

In a modest kitchen, the crowd eagerly hovered around Katherine Prescott’s four-burner stove. There the writers watched a re-creation of chocolate burned almond toffee that in just nine months’ time went from being a hobby to an award-winning, nationally distributed gourmet item.

The 75-year-old, petite firecracker of a cook didn’t miss a beat as she enthusiastically explained the procedure behind her highly successful candy. The toffee, decidedly crispy with a strong burned almond flavor, is sold under the Katherine’s Own label. An eight-ounce box retails for a whopping $12.50 in some stores, but the average price is $7.50.

“There’s no secret recipe; the secret is in doing it,” said Prescott, a distinguished, slightly gray-haired Southern lady from Alabama whose slight drawl and impeccable speech exude charm.

As she melted the chocolate and added the other ingredients to her confection, the writers fired off questions and barked out directions for photographs. No question was too mundane for Prescott, who told the story of her popular candy with a support staff consisting of her husband and son, both named John.

Prescott has been making her toffee for decades. When her son landed a job doing promotion for traveling theater shows, she would often send a supply of toffee as a care package. The road productions of musicals such as “The King and I” may have occasionally been panned by the critics, but the toffee always opened to raves.

At the constant urging of friends and relatives, the Prescotts decided to take the toffee out of Katherine’s kitchen and place it in gourmet stores around the country. In a sense, this family effort proved to be the exception to the rule that only major food corporations with multimillion-dollar advertising campaigns can successfully introduce new items.

When Prescott decided to go into commercial toffee production, under the company name of Great Expectations Gourmet Foods Ltd., she subcontracted the actual work to a Chicago-based confectioner. She claims the product has not suffered and is still hand-made with choice ingredients even though about 200 pounds of toffee is produced each week.

The quality is easily recognizable, and Katherine’s Own is now carried by about 100 stores nationwide, including a half-dozen or so in Southern California. The toffee was also recently honored by a specialty food trade association as 1985’s “best domestic candy.”

The recipe remains relatively true to that demonstrated for the food writers.

” . . . Then just stir in one cup of slivered onions . . . Onions? Did I say onions? I meant almonds. But what do you expect--I’m a 75-year-old woman,” Prescott said.

The hour-or-so cooking demonstration was filled with anecdotes such as where the ancient pot used to melt the chocolate was purchased, a detailed description of the flowers in the front yard and expressions of shock over the high prices that New York storekeepers are charging for her toffee.

The pressures of cooking and conducting a press conference eventually frazzled Prescott. A virtual crisis occurred when both the caramel and chocolate were supposed to be poured on a baking sheet.

In a moment of anxiety, Prescott declared, “I forgot to put the chocolate on . . . darn. That’s the first time I’d ever done that.”

She improvised by pouring the melted semisweet over the then-solidified caramel and may have pioneered a new product considering the enthusiasm with which the audience received the fortuitous prize.

As the toffee-laden press corps lumbered aboard the bus to visit the next chocolate entrepreneur, Prescott was asked what it was like to entertain and inform a kitchen full of reporters.

“I’ve never had so much fun,” she said. “I’m the center of attention. I loved it. It’s like being a movie star. It reminds me of the time when I was a social worker and made a speech about finding long-lost relatives.”

And when was that?

“Oh, 1938.”