Honeycomb isn’t the easiest thing to master, but it is absolutely delicious and it looks amazing on top of a chocolate cake, so why not give it a try? I made it several times before I managed to master it, so I hope I have made this recipe as fool proof as possible, so you don’t waste time and money trying to get it right.
If you find that the honeycomb isn’t crunchy, but is soft and chewy, it means that you didn’t let the sugar and syrup get hot enough before you added the bicarbonate of soda. You need to let it go brown, without burning it.
My advice would be to have a read through the whole recipe before you start and have the bicarbonate of soda measured out in a little dish, so you can throw it into the pan quickly.
Ingredients:
100g white sugar
2 tablespoons golden syrup
2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
80g dark chocolate (optional)
Using a small frying pan, heat the sugar and the golden syrup until they have melted together, stirring gently.
As soon as the sugar has melted, turn the heat down and leave the mixture alone and let it bubble away until it is brown and has formed small bubbles. This will take about 2 minutes. Just use your spoon to gently push any of the sugar back into the middle of the pan, if you have to, to make sure it is heating evenly. You can tell it is hot enough when it starts to go dark brown.
Take the pan off the heat and as quickly as you can, tip in the bicarbonate of soda and whisk it in. Use a plastic handheld whisk, so that you don’t scratch the pan. The honeycomb will foam up and form larger bubbles. Then tip it out onto some baking paper on a large plate and leave it to cool for at least an hour.
It will deflate a bit, which is normal.
When it is cool, you can then smash it up into pieces and decorate your cake with it. NB: The honeycomb will go soggy if you leave it on icing for any length of time, so only decorate the cake when you are about to eat it.
Tip: the mixture sticks to the pan immediately, so have a bowl of hot soapy water ready to wash the pan and the whisk.
Adaptation
You can melt 80g of chocolate and cover the honeycomb with it before you smash it up.
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