What happens when you add bicarbonate of soda to caramelised sugar? Magic! (Actually, chemistry, but let us not ruin the moment with technicalities.)
Sugar work is not one of my specialities, but with the boyfriend’s support, the sky is the limit, so we decided to give it a shot. The seed for the idea of making honeycomb was planted after watching a few episodes of BBC’s show Sweets Made Simple, with the sweetest couple you have ever seen presenting.
Honeycomb is wonderful served with some lactose-free home-made vanilla ice cream.
The recipe in the show asks for liquid glucose, but we could not track any in our regular supermarkets. Additionally, I spent about 20 minutes in the store trying to find golden syrup, and failed. However, we found out that we can substitute it with honey, so our adventure could begin. The recipe we used can be found here. After a few attempts, I modified the amount of bicarbonate of soda to get large enough bubbles.
Honeycomb
Ingredients
- neutral-flavoured oil, for greasing
- 100g caster sugar
- 50g honey (or golden syrup)
- 2 tbsp water
- 5g bicarbonate of soda
Equipment
- Large saucepan
- Whisk
- Sugar thermometer
- Silicone mat
Instructions
- Grease a silicone mat with neutral oil. Make sure you have your bicarbonate of soda and a whisk ready to go.
- Place the sugar, honey and water into a large saucepan and bring the mixture to a boil. Reduce to low heat and cook without stirring until the mixture turns golden and reaches 154˚C on a candy thermometer (hard crack stage). Keep an eye on your mixture so that it doesn’t burn.
- Remove from the heat and quickly add the bicarbonate of soda. Whisk quickly for a few seconds to combine the bicarbonate of soda with the sugar mixture – it should foam up rapidly. Immediately pour onto the prepared silicone mat and set aside to cool.
- When the honeycomb is set, break it up into bite-sized chunks. Store in an airtight container.