The Best Chocolate Honeycomb Recipe I’ve Tried Uses An Unexpected Spice

Once you learn how easy, cheap, and fun it is to make honeycomb ― the deceptively complex-looking sweet that only requires sugar, water, golden syrup, and bicarbonate of soda ― you’ll never stop. 

The simple recipe involves boiling sugar and syrup in water until it caramelises into a light amber colour.

Then, you add a couple of teaspoons of bicarbonate of soda into the pot and place the suddenly-frothing mix into a buttered tin (if you loved vinegar and bicarbonate of soda “volcano” projects in school, you’ll adore this). 

Only one problem; I’m so fond of the easy, reliable recipe that everyone I’m close to has been given the same basic treat for one event or another. 

So, I recently tried a dark chocolate and ginger version of the treat, with a tasty spice on top. 

Chilli adds a tasty kick

The Taste recipe goes a little above the basic honeycomb I’d made before.

Not only does it add ginger and salt to the sugar mix alongside the froth-creating bicarbonate of soda, but it also coats the top of the treat with toasted almonds, dark chocolate, and chilli flakes. 

The steps were simple: I waited until the honeycomb had cooled, put the chocolate in the microwave for a minute, and then poured it all over the base. 

After that, sprinkling the chilli, salt, and nuts on top was easy. I added dried cranberries for a bit of a textural break from the endless snap of the rest of the snack, which I recommend. Crystallised ginger would be nice too.

The biggest issue I faced was with the chocolate, which didn’t set as hard as I would’ve liked ― for some reason, it was still runny hours after adding it to the honeycomb.

On reflection, I think that was because I didn’t let the honeycomb cool fully. 

Still, the chocolate was fine (if duller and less appetisingly shiny) after a couple of hours in the fridge.

Then, the sheet was ready to be broken up into shards and placed in a clear bag for gifting (it needs eating within three to six days).

The balance of sweet honeycomb with bitter chocolate; creamy, toasty almonds; and bright chilli and cranberries… yeah, it’s safe to say I’ll be making that again.

How can I make my homemade honeycomb thicker?

The only other gripe I had with the otherwise-infallible recipe is that my honeycomb turned out a little bit thin. 

Don’t get me wrong; it was still tasty. But as it turns out, the height I longed for was missing because I’d messed up the bicarbonate of soda add-in. 

According to Lyle’s Golden Syrup’s site, I was probably too eager when stirring the leavening agent into the caramel. 

“Mixing the bicarb in too much at this stage will knock out all the air, making your honeycomb flat,” they wrote.

“Mix it enough for the bicarbonate of soda to incorporate and then stop!” 

Noted.