“Honey, I’m comb!” …sticky and sweet honeycomb

by bfbaker

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Okay, so in theory this is a super easy recipe. In theory. I, however, had a wee bit of teething problems when I first tried this out but…live and learn and all that jazz…

Honeycomb, or Hokey Pokey as it’s sometimes affectionately called, always reminds me of my Grandad on my dad’s side. I’m not entirely sure why – or if they were even a favourite of his – but I seem to associate Crunchie bars with him. I remember him giving them to me when I was wee and I couldn’t really ever quite finish one; my fingers would be sticky with melting chocolate as I sat beside him in the car all trussed up in my baby seat. It’s strange and it’s not any more of a formed memory than that but…it’s there and I like having those little ephemeral flickers of my past. When you don’t really know what you were doing, or the circumstances you were in or even if your thoughts are entirely reliable as these things often become misty with nostalgia and age.

I find food, like certain scents or songs, can often have this effect; it’s connected to places or people or moments in your own history and can in a split second take you back to that time.

As I said, this is a very simple recipe and is actually an awful lot of fun to make; might be good fun to show kiddies too but probably not the wisest of moves to allow them too close – melting sugar and the reaction when you stir in the bicarb can be a little bit troublesome for little ones and we don’t want scalded hands.

Recipe;

200g caster sugar

5 tbsp golden syrup

2 tsp bicarbonate ofsoda

Butter for greasing

  1. Grease 20” tin well with butter and pop sugar and golden syrup in a deep saucepan.

  2. Now, this is where I hit a little trouble – you’ll want your pan to have quite a thick bottom as you don’t want the mixture to start bubbling until the sugar has all melted and become caramel. I did not, like a wally, use a proper pan and the entire thing bubbled away for too long, making my honeycomb taste burnt. I was right grouchy about this.

  3. Let the caramel bubble until it’s a deep amber, then take off the heat and stir in the bicarb. This is where the fun starts – it’ll bubble and balloon and seemingly come to life. Stir furiously for a couple of minutes and pour into your greased tin.

  4. Place to one side for one or two hours until it has cooled and then bash it up and enjoy!

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