I Really Should Have Known Better

I have known for years that drinking caffeine after the noon hour means I will lie wide awake in the middle of the night, staring at the ceiling.

But one day this week I found myself buying a breakfast wrap for lunch at one of my favorite coffee spots, and I thought: coffee! Why wouldn't I? And though my plan was to fill my large paper cup with decaffeinated coffee, I was seduced by the Southern Pecan coffee at the coffee urn counter.

This was surprising, seeing as flavored coffee is not really my thing.
But I thought, hey! Why not?

And MAJORLY REGRETTED IT, when at 1:19 am my eyeballs refused to close.  (That's why not, you idiot...)

Now, my plan for early the next morning had been to make some toffee for a friend's birthday later that day. But I laid there as the hour clicked on toward 2, and thought: What better time than now?

I got up. I wrapped myself in my giant hoodie and skulked like an intruder through my midnight cottage. I turned on all the lights in the kitchen, and loaded up butter and sugar into a pot, stirring to beat the band.

Wide awake, by the way.

Now, I'm not sure why I had it in my head that toffee was the thing to make, since toffee is not something I have ever made before, and is known to be on the trickier side of easy. But things were going along swimmingly, caramel shaping before my eyes, when ALL OF A SUDDEN the butter was separating and the sugar was clumping. I didn't know what I was looking for, but I was pretty sure it wasn't that. So I tried to keep it, tried to make it work, but in the long run:
Into the trash it went.

But no worries! It's 2:38 in the morning, but I am still WIDE AWAKE! And I happen to have more butter and more sugar, so here we go again, after I research a bit what just went wrong. This time I add salt to the butter and sugar, so that it doesn't separate, and I stir less frantically, so that it doesn't evaporate too quickly, and things are looking up! Ooey gooey caramel starts to form, and my timer is set for the 13 minutes this new recipe suggests.

But, who knew that beautiful amber turns to browned-out burned in less than a second?

Not I, because, as you recall, I've never done this before.

Turns out, my stove only needed eleven minutes. Still, I tried to make it happen. I poured it all out on the cookie sheet, I covered it with chocolate and pecans and course sea salt. I hoped against hope that the fact that my kitchen smelt like some sort of burnt sacrifice had occurred would have absolutely no effect on the flavor. I stuck the pan in the refrigerator to shape itself up, and returned--still AWAKE, but less WIDE--to my bed.

In the morning, after sleeping the sleep of "I should have been doing this all along", I ran to the fridge to see what I would see. I pulled it out, I cracked those pieces just like the recipe said I would.

And then I tasted it, the moment of truth.

And the truth is: It was AWFUL.

Over salted and burnt for sure.

The good news, however, is that I am 

a) more determined than ever to learn how to do this, 

now that I know what I am and am not looking for, 

and b)

Trader Joe's has my back.

As for the coffee, I really should have known better.

As for the toffee: Soon enough, I will.