Disneyland Churro Toffee (a Copycat Recipe!)

Why This Recipe Works

What is Churro Toffee? Churro Toffee has garnered a cult following by Disneyland goers and it’s easy to see why! This toffee is addicting. My mom and I have been annual passholders for well over 15 years and are Disney treat fanatics.

We spent time studying the candymakers making the churro toffee to try to make this copycat recipe as authentic as possible.

If you love Disneyland like us, check out our other posts Chef Art Smith’s Macaroni and Cheese (from his restaurant at Disney World!), 7 Things You Didn’t Know About Disneyland, and the Healthy Guide to Eating at Disneyland.

This toffee is not only a great treat but makes a great gift for your friends and neighbors!

Ingredient Notes

• Almonds. Toasted, finely chopped almonds are added to the Disneyland churro toffee. You may omit if you prefer your toffee without nuts.
• Butter. You can use salted or unsalted butter. I typically use salted.
• Sugar. You’ll need white, granulated sugar. Sugar goes in the toffee and in the cinnamon sugar churro coating of the outside of the toffee.
• Brown Sugar. We use just a little bit of brown sugar, I like the complexity the molasses in the brown sugar adds to the toffee.
• Water. Water helps the sugars dissolve evenly.
• Salt. A little salt balances the sweetness.
• Baking Soda. Baking soda lightens the toffee, giving it a better texture.
• White Chocolate. The toffee is coated in white chocolate before being covered with cinnamon sugar. You can use a white chocolate bar, white chocolate candy bar or candy coating, or white chocolate melting wafers. I do not recommend using chocolate chips, they do not melt easily and tend to burn easily.  
• Cinnamon. Ground cinnamon is mixed with granulated, white sugar for a classic churro crunch on the outside.

How to Make this Recipe

1. Toast Almonds. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and spread your almonds over a baking sheet and bake 9-10 minutes until they are toasted. Keep an eye on them so they don’t burn. Let the almond cool completely before finely chopping them.
2. Prepare your Pan. Take a baking sheet and line it with parchment paper or a silicone mat. Spread your chopped almonds over the parchment paper in a thin layer. Alternatively, you can mix the chopped almonds into the toffee after you add the baking soda.

3. Heat Butter and Sugar. In heavy-bottomed pan, melt your butter over medium-high heat. Once the butter has melted attach your candy thermometer to the side, add the sugar, brown sugar, salt, and water. Stir mixture continuously until it reaches 300 degrees Fahrenheit (hard crack stage) and remove from heat.
4. Add Baking Soda. Add you baking soda and stir in. The toffee will start to bubble.

5. Pour and Cut. Pour over the chopped almonds and using a greased spatula spread the toffee thinly and evenly across the baking sheet. If slicing into squares, use a greased knife or plastic knife to slice the toffee into the size of squares you want, you need to do this while the toffee is still warm. Let the toffee cool before coating.

6. Melt Chocolate. Melt your white chocolate in the microwave (in a microwave safe container) in 20-30 second increments, stirring in between, making sure it doesn’t burn. Dip your toffee squares in the white chocolate so they have thin, even coating on all sides.
7. Coat in Cinnamon Sugar. Mix the cinnamon and sugar in a container large enough for the toffee squares. while the chocolate is still wet, coat the toffee completely in cinnamon sugar, now it is churro toffee. Let it cool and set completely before eating.

Alternative Method Cutting and Coating Toffee

Disneyland cuts their churro toffee into large, thin squares and coats the entire thing in white chocolate and cinnamon sugar. However, I understand this is a little bit of a pain and maybe not the most the ideal for sharing.

If you’d like to simplify the process, spread the toffee into a thin layer on your lined baking sheet, let it cool, and spread white chocolate over the top and generously coat in cinnamon sugar. You can either leave the white chocolate on one side or once it has set, flip the toffee over and repeat spreading white chocolate and cinnamon sugar on the other side.

You can also spread white chocolate chips across the toffee, pop it in the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 5 minutes until the chocolate chips are soft enough to spread in an even coating. Then add your cinnamon sugar mixture over top while the chocolate is still wet.

Once the white chocolate has set, you can break the toffee into irregular shapes, perfect for sharing and snacking on.

Disneyland’s Technique on Perfect Churro Toffee

I spent a good amount of time studying Disneyland's churro toffee, including watching them make it on Main Street through the window.

To make your churro toffee authentic you need to make it thin to start. Use greased spatula to evenly spread the toffee across your pan, you want your toffee to be super thin! Look how thin the toffee is in the picture of my churro toffee from Disneyland is. To do this though you will need to work quickly as the toffee starts to set almost immediately.

After you have spread your toffee across your pan, take knife and cut your toffee into nice even squares. You can measure if you like or just eyeball it. I got about 15 squares the same size as Disneyland makes their churro toffee.

I watched them coating the churro toffee a Disneyland and they work gloves and used their hands to spread the white chocolate in a super thing layer across the toffee. However, if this sounds like a mess waiting to happen you can also just use a fork to help you dip the toffee into the white chocolate, just know the white chocolate might turn out a bit thicker. I found it easiest to use a microwave safe container that was slightly larger than the toffee pieces. That way it is super easy to dip and coat your toffee but so you can also pop it back in the microwave if the white chocolate starts to get too thick while you’re working.

At Disneyland they use a kind of “burying” technique to coat the toffee in cinnamon sugar. They have a large container of cinnamon and sugar and then they’ll plop their white chocolate coated toffee into it and cover it completely in cinnamon and sugar. They’ll let it sit there for a while they continue to work and then they’ll pull it out once the white chocolate has set.

Now for us, I’m not mass-producing churro toffee like Disney is, so making a giant tub of cinnamon and sugar isn’t realistic. But, I still did use their burying technique and found it be much more efficient at getting the cinnamon and sugar to coat evenly and stick to the white chocolate than some of the other methods I tried.  However, because I could only put one piece of toffee in my churro sugar mixture at a time, I would bury each piece, let it sit for a minute or two until the white chocolate was sort of set and would then move it to another pan to cool and set completely.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Expert Tips

• Cut toffee while warm.  The toffee sets up quickly so you’ll want to cut it quickly after you set it. I recommend using a plastic knife or a greased sharp knife to cut it.
• Be careful heating the white chocolate. Heat the white chocolate in short increments in the microwave, stirring each time in between so it does not burn. I recommend either a white chocolate bar, white chocolate almond bark/candy coating, or  white chocolate melting wafers. White chocolate chips are not ideal for this recipe, chocolate chips do not melt easily, they are designed to hold their shape.
• Use a heavy-bottomed pot. Thin saucepans don’t hold their heat evenly can lead to burned toffee.
• What to do if the butter separates. If the butter separates from the sugar when you are heating the mixture, lower the heat and continue to whisk the mixture until it comes back together. Then you can raise the heat again.
• Use parchment paper. Line your baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone mat. You don’t want to use wax paper, butcher paper, aluminum foil, or plastic wrap.  

Variations of this Recipe

Try a tasty variation of this recipe. Just know that it won’t be authentic Disneyland churro toffee, but delicious nonetheless.

• Omit the Nuts. If you’re not a fan of nuts in your toffee just leave them out, easy.
• Swap the Nuts. Try swapping the almonds for another kind of nut, like pecans.
• Change the Chocolate. I’m not normally a huge white chocolate person, but I think it works well in this recipe. However, if white chocolate isn’t your thing you’re welcome to use milk or dark chocolate instead.
• Spice it up. This recipe would be so good with different spices. Switch out the cinnamon for something like pumpkin pie spice or apple pie spice.

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