Honeycomb

Violet crumble is the first chocolate bar I can ever remember eating. It’s been around for decades and I love it, so as I’ve been experimenting with sugar lately, I decided to have a go at making my own. Sweet, crunchy and covered in chocolate, all in all, I’m very happy with the result.

Ingredients

300g white sugar
⅓ cup golden syrup
⅓ cup honey
⅓ cup water
2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
300g Dark Chocolate (optional)

Directions

Line a 22.5cm by 22.5 cm tray or dish with a layer of baking paper. Make sure the paper extends at least 2cm up the sides.

Place the sugar, golden syrup, honey and water in a heavy based pan with high sides. Place on a medium head stirring until the sugar dissolves and the syrup starts to boil.

Allow the syrup to simmer until it is between 125 and 130 degrees Celsius. Once the syrup reaches this temperature, remove it from the heat and allow the bubbles to settle.

Add the bicarbonate of soda into mixture and beat vigorously. When you tip in the bicarb, it will appear like not much is happening but once you start beating the reaction and volume increase will be rapid so you need to work fast.

Once the volume stops increasing, pour mixture into a lined dish and set aside to cool for a couple of hours until it reaches room temperature.

After cooling, take the honeycomb out of the dish and wrap it in a tea towel so that it can be gently broken up without having pieces fly off in all directions.

A final optional step is to melt some chocolate and coat the pieces of honeycomb in it. You do this by simply dropping the pieces of honeycomb into the melted chocolate. Swishing them around with a fork to ensure they are evenly coated before fishing them out and laying them on a sheet of baking paper to set.

If you need it, you can see our How to Melt Chocolate page for more details on how to do this.

Recipe Notes

Temperature is vitally important in the Honeycomb making process. The ideal range you should aim for is somewhere between 125 and 130 degrees. The picture shows the difference. The stack on the left was taken to 125 degrees, the stack on the right 130.

If the syrup is not brought up to a high enough temperature, it will retain too much moisture and will result in a sticky toffee like residue being left in your mouth when you try to eat it. If you go too far the other way and allow the temperature to rise too high, you will end up with a honeycomb that will disintegrate very easily and will lack a nice crunch. Either way, it will still taste good, but it will really spoil the texture or mouth feel when you eat it.

Cook time: 40 min
Total time including cooling: 2 hour 40 min
Recipe By Martin, Flavoursome Delights