Honeycomb aka Cinder Toffee

Cupcake had been going on at me for ages to buy her some chocolate-coated Honeycomb which they had in a UK clothes store, temptingly placed near the tills. One day I gave in and said 'OK'... '... you can have the honeycomb', the cashier rang the register.. that's £3.50. 'Sorry Cupcake I said, you can't have the honeycomb'. There was no way I was paying that amount of money for something that in the supermarket would cost £1.50, or, even better, something I could possibly make myself.

Anyway, I've wanted to make my own honeycomb for a while. I already knew it was sugar, syrup and bicarbonate of soda and that's it. Sounds easy. You can cover it in chocolate if you like .. or not.

So, I looked up the recipe on-line, gathered the ingredients, followed the instructions and ta-da !! Honeycomb. See photo below.

Lots of it isn't there !!

Here's what I did:

Recipe courtesy of:  http://www.robertprice.co.uk/

I doubled up the original recipe. (I knew it would disappear super quick !)

Ingredients

200gr caster sugar (I used golden unrefined)
6 tablespoons of Golden Syrup
2 tsp Bicarbonate of Soda

Method:

1. Mix the caster sugar and golden syrup together in a saucepan
2. Put the saucepan on a low heat
3. Slowly stir with a sugar thermometer until it reaches about 300F. This is known as 'Hard Crack'. If you don't have a sugar thermometer, you can test the mix is at 'hard crack' stage by dropping a little bit of the mix into a glass of cold water. Then dig out the little bit of sugar and it should be crunchy and hard, not soft and like fudge.
4. At this point, add the bicarbonate of soda and stir quickly and very well. If you don't stir you could be left with a salty taste to the honeycomb... Enough said. I did find that I wasn't quite sure when I had stirred 'enough' ... I assumed that you didn't wait or mix all of the bubbles out of the mix otherwise then you wouldn't have honeycomb...

5. When you think you've stirred enough... Pour the mix onto a baking tray and leave to cool.

6. You will be able to break up the honeycomb...and eat !!

Cupcake was super-pleased with the results.
If you are going to cover the honeycomb in chocolate, I suggest you tip the melted chocolate over the poured honeycomb when the honeycomb is cool, and then leave the chocolate and honeycomb to cool further, and then chop. I made the mistake of chopping the honeycomb first and then 'painting' bits of honeycomb with chocolate, and I made a mess...

NOTE: The second time I made this I used the wrong measuring spoon. I used a teaspoon instead of a tablespoon for the syrup. Silly me! Then I tried to 'guestimate' what the syrup shortfall might be... and added a few more spoonfuls. I carried on with the recipe, poured it out etc and well, it was more like toffee than honeycomb, tasted salty and was, well... inedible. Biscuit Boy joked that he the only thing he could think to do with it was to use it to glue down the kitchen floor (which we are currently laying..) Cheeky beggar !

This post is linked to Prairie Story - Recipe Swap Thursday
and Foodie Friday at Designs by Gollum