Oh Honey!

  • Complete Disaster!
  • Just Perfect!
  • Chocolate Honeycomb!

It was coming up for Christmas and I remembered I had a few recipes of some sweet treats that would be good for some Christmas gifts this year. I watched some videos online and read some recipe books of how to make honeycomb, it looked like fun and seemed simple enough, but boy did I get it wrong!! As you can tell from the image above, this was not the desired outcome of the recipe. It was supposed to look like a wonderful magic trick of turning sugar to caramel to the grand finale of honeycomb but ended up looking like a science experiment gone terribly wrong.

So what happened I hear you ask… well let me start by offering some good grounded advice, read the recipe properly, get the ingredients together and then FOLLOW the recipe. I thought I did but quite clearly did not. In my defence I was daydreaming of winning the Great British Bake off by making the most spectacular honeycomb that Paul Hollywood would be proud of. However, this was probably not the best thing to be daydreaming off as I boil 500g of sugar to the boiling point of 150 degrees. This really was a disaster waiting to happen. The whole pan was black, I burnt the sugar and honey but thought maybe I should just add the bicarbonate of soda just in case by some miracle the soda would change the colour and make it all ok and turn into the golden nuggets I was anticipating. But it didn’t change anything apart from making it easier to remove from the pan by pouring it into the baking tray to what resembled more like coal.

It was driving me a little stir crazy that I did this wrong, I had to try it again to work out where I went so horribly wrong. I read the recipe again got all my ingredients together and then realised I missed the most important step… water. So basically, I just put 500g of sugar and honey on the hob to boil so no wonder it burnt so much. I can’t believe I missed out the most crucial step. Therefore, make sure you have all your ingredients together and make sure that you read the instructions of the recipe. Sometimes ingredients is in there, such as water, as it wasn’t listed as an ingredient. So maybe I can be more forgiving of myself, however, a valuable lesson has been learned.

Recipe instructions.

  1. Prepare the baking tray/ roasting tin with greaseproof paper, making sure that the greaseproof paper is quite high at the sides of the tin as the honeycomb mixture will rise. Then put to one side until required.
  2. Measure out the ingredients, put sugar and the runny honey and WATER into a pot. I would suggest mixing this together to make sure that is sugar mixture is wet, however, please be gentle with it and if you see that there is sugar crystalizing at the side of the pot get a pastry brush and dip into some cold water and brush it over the crystallised areas to melt the sugar. You do not want the sugar to crystallise at this stage. Measure out the bicarbonate soda and keep to the side, it is not required at this stage but is handy to have nearby.
  3. Put a gentle heat under the pot and watch the sugar mixture slowly heat. Be careful not to daydream of winning the GBBO. The mixture will be getting ridiculously hot and will start to caramelise, you want to keep a close eye on the temperature as it can rise quickly. The optimum temperature you are wanting the mixture to reach is 150 degrees Celsius. Please be very careful here and use the sugar thermometer to check the temperature, it will be extremely hot, and you do not want to be touching or tasting the caramel mixture. You want to see a caramel brown/ toffee mixture.
  4. Once you have reached the desired temperature, take it off the heat and add the bicarbonate of soda and you will see the mixture change in consistency and will quickly froth up. Whisk the mixture with whisk or wooden spoon for it all to combine and then pour into the prepared baking tray.
  5. Leave the tray to one side and let it cool for a couple of hours as the mixture will take some time to cool down.
  6. Once the honeycomb has cooled, snap it into little bitesize pieces and cover in melted chocolate. For the melted chocolate, break the pieces up in a microwavable bowl, ping in the microwave until the chocolate is melted and dip the honeycomb into the bowl and then place in the cooling wire rack for the chocolate to set.
  7. Now enjoy.