Ingredients:

1 Cup Water
2 Cup sugar
4 sticks sweet (unsalted) butter
1 lb. raw shelled almonds
1 1/2 lb. milk chocolate

Instructions:

Grease 2 9x13 pans and place in ice water. I've found that non-stick pans don't need to be greased. I run a couple of inches of water into my sinks and dump a tray of ice cubes in each and then put my pans in. It's important that the toffee cool quickly.

Chop half the almonds finely. I put them into the food processor. There should be smallish chunks left and a fair amount of almond dust.

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler. The quality of the chocolate is important. I've been using Hershey's Symphony Bars. White chocolate might be amusing. If you try it, let me know.

You'll need a large heavy pot to cook the toffee in: I use a Dutch oven. The size and weight of the pot is important. You don't want the toffee to burn and the heavy pot helps distribute the heat evenly. Plus, the mixture increases significantly in volume while boiling, so the pot needs to be large.

Stirring constantly over high heat, cook water and sugar until stringy. There's some debate over what the "stringy" instruction from the original recipe means. We've taken it to mean that when you pour the cooking mixture off your spoon, you don't get individual drops. Instead, you get something that looks like a continuous string. I often get a couple of separate strings pouring off the spoon.

Stirring constantly over high heat, add butter, 1 stick at a time.

Stirring constantly over high heat, add whole almonds. Continue stirring until you smell the roasted almonds. The mixture will take on a distinct brown color just before this and you'll feel the texture of the mixture changing.

Pour into pans in ice water. I try to stir the stuff while pouring; otherwise the almonds don't get distributed real evenly throughout the mix. Don't try to spread the stuff with a tool; just try to pour it evenly. Sugar behaves funny in this state and pushing it around will change the texture of the result. I've read that you shouldn't scrape out the contents of the pan either. The stuff that sticks is chemically different from the stuff that pours. I've not noticed that much sticks, so it isn't really a problem. Once the pans are cool enough that they aren't warm to the touch, I throw them into the freezer for 15 minutes.

Cover with half the chocolate and then half the chopped nuts. I press the nuts into the chocolate with the spoon that I used for spreading the nuts. Then back into the freezer for another 15 minutes and then cover other half with remaining chocolate and nuts.

Break into pieces and store in the freezer.

Half recipes work just fine, but take just about as much work as the full recipe.