Honeycomb or Hokey Pokey

Thursday, November 10          Honeycomb or Hokey Pokey

http://www.oprah.com/food/Honeycombs and http://candy.about.com/od/sugarcandy/r/honeycomb.htm

To remind me of the New Zealand Candy I dipped these in chocolate!

 

So I was trying to decided from the millions of recipes I already had and the ones I recently discovered online what to make for day two. And figuring I already had most of the ingredients on hand from making the Marshmallows I decided to make Honeycomb.

Now I’m not sure many of you know about honeycomb. If you’re from Europe or New Zealand then you do, only you call it Hokey Pokey or Puff. See Wikipedia for more details Crunchie Bar or here Sponge Toffee

I love it! I wish I could buy Hokey Pokey here in the States (not online and I’m aware Newbury Comics sells it for a ridiculous price). So I stumbled upon this recipe on the Oprah website! Now you might say this doesn’t seem as hard at Marshmallow. I know! I’m not going from difficult to easy or vice versa, I’m going for what makes me not bored!

So here we go:

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup honey
• 1/2 cup light corn syrup
• 2 cups granulated sugar
• 1 generous tbsp baking soda
• 1/4 cup water
• 2 tbsp shortening
• 12 ounces dark chocolate
  
  (So I know this has a picture of powdered sugar but I threw away the box of regular sugar before I remembered to take a picture)

Tools:

• Wooden Spoon
• Baking Sheet
• Aluminum Foil
• Large Saucepan

Directions:

Prepare a rimmed baking sheet by lining it with aluminum foil and spraying the foil with nonstick cooking spray.

Combine the sugar, corn syrup, honey, and ¼ cup water in a large saucepan. (You want to use a saucepan large enough so that the mixture can triple in size and still be safely contained.) Stir the ingredients together (with a wooden spoon) until the sugar is completely moistened.

Insert a candy thermometer (I don’t have a candy thermometer to make this with however after today I feel like I need to get one! A digital no matter how high it goes up to is really no substitute!) and cook the mixture over medium-high heat, without stirring, until the temperature reaches 300 degrees.

At this point please be EXTREMELY careful, this is hot sugar that causes serious burns!

Once the candy is at the proper temperature, remove it from the heat and add the baking soda all at once. Immediately whisk the candy to incorporate the baking soda, and be careful—it will foam up.

As soon as the baking soda is incorporated, pour the candy carefully onto the prepared sheet.

This doesn’t pour “evenly” like you might think. I tried to spread it out on the pan but the sugar just wouldn’t cooperate!

Allow it to cool and harden completely, and then break it into small pieces. Honeycomb can be eaten as-is, or you can dip it in chocolate

All in all this was an extremely easy recipe to make. However I’m leery so far of the texture that it went too high above 300 for me that it’s more like hard candy and less like Honeycomb or Hokey Pokey. But when I come home from work tonight, I’ll have to find out!

I also want to warn people that there are a lot of conflicting recipes out there. I read the reviews after each recipe as well and people all had varying results despite “following the recipe exactly”. If you go from recipe to recipe make sure that the measurements are the same even if the directions are not or you’ll wind up in big trouble and a waste of money!

So I'm dying to try these and I will post as soon as I do! I also have to pick up some chocolate on my way home from work. Regretably since I had the ingredients I can't post the prices but I estimate it's around the same cost as the Marshmallows ($7.50).

Total Time from start to finish: 1 hour (plus 2 hours for "setting")

**For Tomorrow: Fleur De Sel Caramels!