Cinder toffee/honey comb

Cinder toffee is something that I have wanted to make for a long time but it has always kind of frightened me.  It does bring back lovely memories for me of Hull fair a young child.  My Aunty would sometimes buy us a bag of that or brandy snap.  Recently I have been thinking about which sweets I will make as Christmas presents this year.  Unfortunately the ingredients for some of the things that I used to make have almost doubled in price.  I knew from the list of ingredients that honey comb, or cinder toffee as we called it as children, would be a cheap alternative.  I therefore put my big pants on.

Ingredients

2 cups of granulated sugar

1/2 a cup of golden syrup

1 tbsp of bicarbonate of soda.

Method

1.  You need a biggish pan for this as the mixture grows like a science experiment.  I used a pan as big as a casserole dish.
2. Into the pan put the two cups of sugar and the half a cup of golden syrup.
3. Stir these together before putting them on the heat.  Make sure that you have no mixture up the side of the pan.
4.  Put the mixture on to the heat, but not too high.  I stirred it a bit until the sugar melted.  Cook until the mixture goes from golden brown to dark brown around the edges.
5. Line a big baking tray with parchment paper, making sure that it goes up the sides.
6. My mixture took about 4 minutes to go past golden to slightly darker.
7. Take the mixture of the heat and add the bicarbonate of soda, and whisk it.
8.  The mixture will start to froth and grow.
9. Pour into the lined tray.  I actually used a large roasting tray as I  have seen videos of the mixture growing and pouring over the sides.
10. Leave it to cool.
11. I washed my pan out straight away with boiling water.  Don’t put cold water into it as the dregs will go rock hard.
12. When it was cool, I smashed it with a rolling pin.  I then broke it up into bit with my hands.
13. Store the cinder toffee in an air tight container.
14. I had quite a few crumbs which I saved in a jar as they will be nice on ice cream.

Apologies for the photos.  It was very early in the morning. Eventually I will dip some of his cinder toffee in chocolate, like a Crunchie bar.  Mr S has to hide the chocolate from me in his car boot and he is out at the moment.  If chocolate is in the house, I just eat it.  I reckon that all this cinder toffee cost me about 50p to make, without the chocolate.   We can’t wait to try it with ice cream.  What was I so scared about, I ask myself?  I guess it was like the first time that I canned tomatoes.  It is the unknown.  I am so glad that I stepped out of my comfort zone and made this.  It was easier than I expected, and fun. I will have a frugal Christmas present when I make it again in December.  Until then, I guess Mr S and I will just have to force ourselves to eat this batch so that it doesn’t waste!   Have you put off making it for some reason?  What do you do with honey comb?

Some other things that we make at Christmas

Christmas Chocolate Lollies.

Christmas Hampers

Easy sweet treats

Another chocolate animal lolly.

Biscoff Truffles

2 kinds of frugal chocolate truffles