Popty'r Bryn Taffir Triog/Treacle Toffee

Product name: Popty’r Bryn Taffir Triog/Treacle Toffee
Country of origin: Wales 

When a Welsh colleague left recently, she kindly bought us all a gift from her home town (well, island!) of Anglesey. 

I received this 100g bag of Taffir Triog (known in English as ‘Treacle Toffee’!) which was made by Popty’r Bryn – a brand described as ‘Welsh farmhouse cooking at its best’, as well as ‘a taste of Anglesey’. I do love this kind of homemade product in simple packaging – it’s nice to think you’re eating something properly authentic and that a real local business has been supported through the sale of the product. It’s just a shame that it also inevitably means a lack of nutritional information!

I don’t think I’ve ever had treacle toffee before so I wasn’t sure whether I’d like it not. I had a sneaking suspicion my tastebuds would be edging towards the ‘not’ and that the flavour would be dark and quite bitter. In addition to that, I’d also been warned that the toffee was very hard on the teeth, so I was slightly concerned!

The Treacle Toffee consisted of 20% treacle and the only other ingredients it contained were sugar, sugar syrup, butter and water. The resulting product was very deep shade of brown that was so dark it almost looked black. It was rock hard to touch and was cut into fairly big, jagged wedges that had stuck together. 

It was relatively easy to yank each piece off the mini toffee mountain and, on close inspection, it was shiny and slightly dimpled in appearance. It was also possible to see what appeared to be sugar granules throughout.

This Taffir Triog had a deep treacle smell which was almost like aniseed which, unfortunately, I don’t like. However, the aroma was a bit sweeter than this and, therefore, still decent.

On cutting into a piece of toffee, I quickly discovered that it really was hard – the white surface on my photo was simply caused by the pressure from the knife! Thankfully, though, it didn’t seem nearly as hard to bite into. It was, initially, extremely crunchy, but certainly not painful on the first few chews. However, it did stick to the teeth badly after that point to the extent that I had to gently prise my jaw apart time and again to ensure my molars remained in place! As a result, it took a long time to eat each mouthful.

The good news was that the flavour was far nicer than I expected it to be. It wasn’t dark at all and simply tasted like sweet, buttery toffee. I’d even go so far as to say that it was juicy – it did just ooze sweetness.

This was a nice little product from a nice little company and the only reason I wouldn’t eat a lot of this in one go is down to the texture and the effort involved in chewing. 

Appearance: 6.5/10
Aroma: 6.5/10
Taste: 7/10
Texture: 5.5/10
Overall score: 6.38/10