Since buying a sugar thermometer I've become somewhat obsessed with the idea of making my own sweets, so I thought why not turn my 'I just Wanna Bake' post on Homemade Marshmallows into a regular feature. I'm going to be creating different sweets each week and sharing my results; the good, the bad and the straight into the bin!
This weeks sweet of choice is Honeycomb, or as I've had to describe to some of my friends, the none chocolate part of a crunchie!! After looking up multiple recipes online I settled on one from Nigella, slightly adjusting her quantities to suit my more greedy needs!
Ingredients:
200g Caster sugar
7 Heaped tablespoons of Golden syrup
3 Teaspoons Bicarbonate of Soda
The essential item for this, and the majority of the sweets I will be making is a sugar thermometer, and as I recently discovered a heavy based pan. The pan really does make a massive difference, I tried using a normal saucepan while making toffee and it just caused the sugar to burn rapidly, swap to a lovely hard based pan and my results improved dramatically.
Into my wonderful hard based pan I added both the Caster sugar and Golden syrup, mixing the two together slightly with a wooden spoon (although you'll want to be sure not to stir the mixture once the hob is turned on). Turn on the hob and cook on a medium heat, ensuring that your sugar thermometer is attached to the side of the pan so you can clearly see the temperature. You can how my mixture started out below- golden in colour.
You want the mixture to reach 149C on your sugar thermometer, otherwise known has the hard crack stage - this may take some time but be patient and don't wander off from your pan of you could miss the crucial temperature.You'll see the mixture bubble away from a beautiful golden colour into a much darker maple shade - you can see mine below.
Once you reach 149C take the pan off the heat and add the 3 teaspoons of bicarb powder, whisk this into the mixture, as you do so you'll see the mixture erupt into a gorgeous mass of liquid gold. You'll then want to act quickly, pouring the mixture into baking tray or dish lined with parchment paper.
Leave the Honeycomb to set, when it has completely cooled you can remove the parchment paper and smash it into chunks. If your feeling extra jazzy you could then dip the honeycomb chunks into melted chocolate - creating your very own crunches!
The length of time the honeycomb can be kept for depends upon the humidity, if your in a hot climate it won't keep as well and will tend to soften faster. Having baked mine in December I'm hopeful I can store it for several weeks, if kept in an airtight container, I've also wrapped my batch up in parchment paper to increase its freshness.
I'd love to hear any tips of suggestions, have you tried making this recipe yourself? How did yours turn out?
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