Honeycomb Recipe - melissassouthernstylekitchen.com (2024)

FAQs

Why is my honeycomb chewy not crunchy? ›

Chewy honeycomb happens when the mixture hasn't been cooked for long enough. This is most common when you don't use a sugar thermometer. If you don't heat the mixture to 149°C the sugar won't achieve the brittleness required for that crumbly, crunchy texture.

Just 4 ingredients (sugar, corn syrup, water, and baking soda) are all that are needed to make this classic favorite. With its sweet golden exterior and those telltale honeycomb-styled bubbles, this recipe is popular all over the world under many different names.

White vinegar – one of the things that makes this candy unique is the light and airy texture of the toffee. We have the vinegar, in part, to thank for that! Vinegar reacts with the baking soda in the recipe to form little bubbles of carbon dioxide that give the honeycomb candy its airy, crisp texture.

They're all names to describe a candy that's made from combining brown sugar, corn syrup and baking soda. The lattice structure of the candy is caused by the baking soda reacting with the acid, resulting in these little air pockets throughout the candy. These pockets of air make it look like honeycomb!

Choose the best honeycomb

It's all good unless the melted sugar is cooked for too long, when it will burn and the bitterness detracts from the acid-sweet pleasures expected. If you undercook it, it will not set properly.

Beeswax is the substance from which honeycomb is made. It's the material that composes the walls of the honeycomb, allowing those beautiful little hexagons to form and fill with honey. We know bees are hard workers, and making beeswax is one of their many responsibilities.

The production of wax comb is energy expensive for the bees. Estimates vary but bees need to eat approximately 6-8 pounds of honey to produce a pound of beeswax. So if you priced the bees work based on the number of calories consumed, honey plus wax costs a lot more than just honey.

It is 100% edible, though the texture is not for everyone. In fact, eating raw honeycomb is one of the best ways to get the most health benefit from your honey. Honey in the honeycomb is in its rawest form, so it will have the most enzymes, vitamins, and minerals of any type of raw honey.

Mix it enough for the bicarbonate of soda to incorporate and then stop! If your sugar syrup isn't hot enough, it will make your honeycomb very chewy. The best way to make sure your sugar is at the right temperature is to use a sugar thermometer.

What to do with failed honeycomb? ›

Instead, if it is enjoyable as is, I would suggest just eating it as a toffee like candy. Otherwise, chalk it up to experience and watch the temperature more closely next time. I have a batch of gooey toffee now too. So im just either enjoying it as is or adding bit or chunks of it to my coffee or ice cream.

Regionally it may be referred to as sponge candy, sea foam, fairy food candy, or old fashioned puff in the US, and in Britain, it is often called Cinder Toffee with variances of puff candy in Scotland, Yellowman in Northern Ireland and Sponge Toffee in Canada.

Honeycomb is vegan if we are talking about the golden, crunchy confectionary that is also known as cinder toffee. It is free-from animal products, unless it is coated in chocolate, which may contain milk. Real honeycomb that comes from a bee hive is not vegan-friendly.

Bee propolis is a sticky, brown substance sometimes known as bee glue. The honey bees gather tree resin, the main ingredient in propolis, from buds and cracks in the bark. The bees add salivary secretions to the resin by chewing on it and add beeswax to the mix. Propolis has a little pollen in it, too.

Broodcomb becomes dark over time, due to empty cocoons and shed larval skins embedded in the cells, alongside being walked over constantly by other bees, resulting in what is referred to as a 'travel stain' by beekeepers when seen on frames of comb honey.

If your sugar syrup isn't hot enough, it will make your honeycomb very chewy. The best way to make sure your sugar is at the right temperature is to use a sugar thermometer. The mixture should be at the 'hard ball' stage, which is normally between 121-130 degrees Celsius.

Honeycomb typically contains raw honey, which is sweet, and the beeswax itself, which is chewy and has a similar mouthfeel to chewing gum. You can eat pieces of honeycomb by themselves as a sweet snack.

Honeycomb can often have a chewy consistency and more texture than filtered, pure honey. This comes from the waxy layer that surrounds the honeycomb. The wax from the honeycomb can be chewed like gum or spit it out. It is all safe to eat!

The easiest way to enjoy honeycomb is to carve out a spoonful, or slice a thin sliver with a knife and enjoy as is. The wax is chewy and edible, although some people prefer to spit it out like gum. It is a guilty-free pleasure.