Homemade Honeycomb & Cadbury Crunchie Bars
Save RecipeMake Homemade Honeycomb, the crunchy toffee caramel, you can use to make Cadbury Crunchy Bars or even add to my 2-Ingredient Homemade Ice Cream recipe!
Hi Bold Bakers!
By popular demand from my No Machine Homemade Ice Cream video, I’m showing you how to make Homemade Honeycomb. It’s a crunchy, toffee caramel that you can add to my Homemade Ice Cream recipe or coat in chocolate to make your own Crunchie Bars. So let’s get baking!
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Make Homemade Honeycomb, the crunchy toffee caramel, you can use to make Cadbury Crunchy Bars or even add to my 2-Ingredient Homemade Ice Cream recipe!
- ½ cup (100g) sugar
- 4 tablespoons golden syrup or honey
- 1 ½ teaspoons baking soda (AKA bicarb of soda) NOT BAKING POWDER
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First, prepare your tray. Line a baking tray with parchment paper, or grease a marble surface with flavorless oil (like I did in the video)
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Place the pot on the heat with the sugar and golden syrup(or honey) and let the mixture first melt, then turn to goo. Turn up the heat to medium and let the it simmer until the color of maple syrup -THIS TAKES 3 MINUTES, SET A TIMER!!! Take care not to overcook.
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Turn off the heat, and get prepared with your whisk and spatula because the next step happens really fast. Whisk in the bicarbonate of soda fast and stand back and watch the syrup turn into a whooshing cloud of aerated pale gold. Quickly stop whisking and use your spatula to pour this immediately onto a piece of baking parchment, greased surface or a silpat .
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Leave until set cold and then bash at it, so that it splinters into many glinting pieces. To wash your pot fill it with hot water and let it sit and it will melt away.
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To make a Crunchie Bar: Melt good quality chocolate (I used chocolate with 72% cocoa solids). Dip your broken honeycomb in the chocolate using a fork. Take out and let excess chocolate drip off. Place on a wire wrack to set.
Watch the Recipe Video!
Baking powder can not be substituted for Baking soda
Take care when using honey as it burns fast then golden syrup
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Hi, my honeycomb doesn’t solidify properly and just ends up like a sticky pile of hard toffee. it has no bubbles in it and doesn’t snap. do you know why this might be and how I could fix it?
Hi Alex,
try again. This is a learning curve. If the caramel is not right it will not develop into a honeycomb.
Go back to the recipe and see the video again, it will really help.
Gemma 🙂
Can u share how this can be stored? I want to make this for my daughter’s birthday and would like to know if I can make it ahead of time (I stay in a non humid climate in India)
Hi Samantha,
this should store well in an airtight container in a cool place. Humidity, as you have guessed, is the enemy of this type of thing.
I hope you enjoy making this, make a sample to try,
Gemma 🙂
what exactly is AKA baking soda, not the standard type used in baking ?
Hi Maureen, Baking soda is also known (AKA) bicarbonate soda. I hope you get to make some honeycomb. 🙂
Absolutely delicious and easy recipe! Thank you!
Wow what a great recipe and so easy! Thank you Gemma for helping us to bigger, bolder bakers too. You are so great at teaching the art of creating delicious and beautiful food!
Hi Dawn,
thank you, I appreciate your kind words. You know, I cannot do it without you,
Gemma 🙂
Made this recipe today come out good????????
Fantastic!
One more question, if I wanted to bit this up some and put it between cake layers with 7 minute frosting, would it just dissolve??
And I’m going to remake my honeycomb ???? got too dark, lol.
Thanks so much for replying and for all your recipes and videos! ????
great question, and yes I think it would dissolve with the moisture.
Hope this helps,
Gemma.
Golden syrup, is this corn syrup?
great question! It is the european version of dark corn syrup.
It is a caramel syrup we use a lot in baking sticky desserts.
Hope this helps,
Gemma.
I’ve since looked up golden syrup and made some! That stuff is really good btw. And just got through making my honeycomb ????????
Smashingly delicious and a breeze to make.
I’ve used Vermont Raw Honey and gave the chocolate dip a spot of Italian rum????
Thank you so much for your lovely candy.
Well done, you! And thank you for the wonderful tip.
Hi I tried it but I burnt it by mistake
Ah! Sara, I am really sorry to hear this. You have learned a really important lesson, never turn your back on the caramel, you will learn to judge it so that it is just perfect, do not give up, try again!
Gemma 🙂
I only use light brown sugar, will that work? I live in South Africa, where it’s very note.
Hi Marianne,
Yes, that should work really well for you, it will caramelize quicker, keep an eye on it.
Thank you for being in touch,
Gemma 🙂
Hello!
I just want to make sure. Did you use caster sugar for this recipe? Is it okay to use normal white sugar instead if you do not have caster sugar?
Hi Alicia,
I use granulated sugar. Here in the US this is a fine grain sugar, like caster sugar. The important thing is to make sure the grains are dissolved before you bring the temperature up to make a caramel.
Seasons greetings to you and yours,
Gemma 🙂
How long will this keep at room temperature? I was hoping to give them as gifts.
Hi there! This will keep for up to 2 weeks. Enjoy!
HI Gemma – I kind of wanted to make this into discs and dip half in chocolate. Does it set too quickly for that to be reasonable? I don’t want to set myself up for frustration and can certainly just break it up if that’s better.
Hi Chanel,
In a word, yes! unless you manage to drop it on to the tray in circles, quickly, it will set hard in a few minutes.
Let us know how you get on, you have to work FAST,
Gemma 🙂
That is what I suspected. I just ordered a break apart tray mold, so we’ll see how that goes. I just want uniform shapes for my current purposes.
Hi Gemma, thanks for the wonderful recipe. I tried it. Could you please let me know how much time I need to keep it in fridge and the top of honeycomb is sticky? Am looking going wrong or it is sticky only
Hi there,
honeycomb is susceptible to humidity, and in a humid environment it will become sticky and actually dissolve. You need to store it in a sealed container at cool temperature for best results.
I am not sure if this is what you mean, it needs to be protected to stay crisp,
Gemma 🙂
So my husband made this today with honey. It looks, smells and tastes awesome but it is not as crunchy, it is more soft.
Should we try with golden syrup? Did he maybe cook it too long, or not enough
Hi Rebecca,
all candy likes to be made with invert sugars, these are sugars which have been changed bye heating in water to convert the sucrose to fructose/glucose mix. This is the science of baking, above my pay grade, but you can read about it online.
Honey is naturally an invert sugar to a degree, as it stays liquid for a long time. I think the heating process helps this too as it can be caramelized which needs to happen for this candy.
I am not sure if this was ever hard in your case, which it should not have been, or it became soft when exposed to room temperature. This candy is particularly vulnerable to humidity, it will not hold up for too long in a moist environment. Under caramelizing will cause an issue for you, and over caramelizing will burn the sugars and make it bitter.
I think I did not hit this for you, but the important thing is that the honey should work well for you, I am not sure what went wrong. Thank you for being in touch,
Gemma 🙂
Hi Gemma, I made this honeycomb today, it looked good but when I tasted it, it was really bitter. I used honey, please tell me where I have gone wrong.
hi there,
You will taste the ingredients you use. The flavor of the honey will come through, and also the bicarbonate of soda adds its’ own flavor.
I think you did not do anything wrong, but thst you expected a different thing!
Gemma 🙂
The best recipey ever!! Tried it twice and it was perfect ????????????????????
Can I make it with clear corn syrup instead? Thank you.????
Hi lulu,
I think you can try this! I think it will be good, but I have not tried it.
A small experiment, that will tell all,
Gemma 🙂
I did it today and it came out great and very pretty.
I used a thermometer and let the temperature of the caramel rise to 154 C
Unfortunatelly I had to made it with honey (I don’t have gold syrup) and so I got an intense honey smell and flavour, which I dislike.
Now I will have to offer it to someone who likes honey.
Hi Ana,
Oh dear! This sweet treat was indeed made with honey traditionally. The flavor of honey will concentrate when treated in this way, I am sorry you do not like it, but you are right, you will make friends by sharing it with the right people,
Gemma 🙂
Tried it and loved it!!! How long will it have the crunchy texture? I have kept it in an airtight container. Will that be enough to keep the texture for a week or so?
Hi Neha,
How this holds depends on the atmosphere where you live, humidity etc. Keep it as cool as you can in an airtight container, but really I think 3 – 4 days will be stretching it, it tends to dissolve when exposed to the air. Covered in chocolate it may hold longer.
I hope this is of help,
Gemma 🙂
Just wondering does it make any different using either golden syrup or honey? (Like in flavour or consistency)
Hi Salma,
Great question. I know for best results and flavor it is best to use golden syrup. It reacts a little differently than honey does. If you have access to it then I suggest that.
Best,
Gemma.
i tried this and worked very well.
can you substitute the honey for glucose syrup? is it possible to get a different colour? Thanks
Hi Victoria,
You know, that is a great question. I honestly don’t know, but there is a part of me that thinks it might work. However you will need to cook it longer to get your caramel because it’s not already ‘caramel like’ .
If you try it let me know. The best best option is Lyles Golden syrup. You can get it on Amazon pretty cheaply.
Gemma.
Hey! Decided to try this out today. I must say I think I did well, though I’m probably going to be getting Golden Syrup or something similar that isn’t honey. You were right when you said that Honey burns faster. My batch had a slightly burned taste (or at least I think that’s what it was…I could just not like the taste of cooked honey).
I will say though, using a thermometer probably would work better than eyeing it out. I’m assuming you want to get the mixture to the hard crack stage. Would doubling the recipe work the same way? I found that these measurements don’t seem to make up much product, and it may also be why my batch tasted burnt. I used a wide pot since I didn’t have anything else I trusted and I guess that can make the mixture cook faster and burn it a lot easier. Perhaps making sure the mixture isn’t spread so thin while cooking it will help.
Hi Kyle,
you hit the nail on the head! If you use a wide pot you will get to temperature very fast with a small amount of ingredients. This works well if you are reducing something, like making condensed milk/dulce De Leche for instance, but not so much for this. It is important to be able to judge it, and I tended to do this by eye/smell until recently, it is a learning curve. Practice this with a little pan, and a little mix, get the sugar dissolved before you raise the temperature, then watch it! It changes, the bubbles change, and as it is about right the smell changes too, becomes like the color of whiskey. Get this right and you will be able to use the technique for all sorts of things. Creme caramel! yum!
Gemma 🙂