Honeycomb story

Honeycomb

Honeycomb is believed to be invented in 1940’s, but its history is quite vague as well as the original recipe. This sugary toffee, a light, rigid, sponge-like texture is known by a variety of  names all over the world.

According to Wikipedia: Cinder toffee in Britain referring to brittle treacle toffee. Yellowman in Northern Ireland is similar to honeycomb toffee. Fairy Food Candy or angel food candy in Wisconsin, USA; Hokey Pokey in New Zealand, Honeycomb in South Africa, Australia and Britain; Puff Candy in Scotland, Sea Foam in Maine, Washington, Oregon, Utah, California and Michigan, USA; Sponge Candy in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, St. Paul, Minnesota, Western New York, and Northwest Pennsylvania, USA and sponge toffee (“tire éponge”) in Canada.

Crisp,bubbly texture, typically made by boiling together sugar, golden syrup, water, and bicarbonate of soda are some of the ingredient list in this recipe. However, I used clear honey instead of golden syrup; I find that I have always run out of golden syrup and have lots of honey in my cupboard. This experiment worked like a dream.

Honeycomb recipe

special equipment: thermometer

Tip: switch off the mobile and don’t take your eyes off the pan until finished!

Ingredients
60ml of honey (3 generous tablespoons)
100 g of sugar
1 teaspoon of baking soda

Method
1)start by preparing a heat-proof surface/dish/tray with a waxed (greaseproof) paper  and well-buttered
2) in a deep medium pan mix the sugar and honey with a couple of tablespoon of water
3) Cook the mixture over medium heat until it reaches 140C, stirring very gently with a spatula. Be careful as it will be VERY hot, and it can easily burn
4) Once the candy has reached it proper temperature, take out from the heat and very quickly stir in the baking soda. It will triple the size or more!
5)Tip the hot candy onto the prepared dish (30cm x 20cm) and spread it evenly .
6) let it cool completely; it will harden and then break into pieces.

You can now eat as it is, cook, crumble over desserts and especially ice cream or dip into chocolate for a nice finish and it will keep it longer.
The honeycomb will keep for 2 days in a tight close container.

Honeycomb

deep the honeycomb shards into melted chocolate – delicious! It will also keep them for  bit longer

Honeycomb ice cream, vanilla ice cream with small pieces of honeycomb

honeycomb ice cream with honeycomb deeped in chocolate