Honeycomb toffee or törökméz as it’s called in Hungarian is a popular treat loved by children and grown ups alike. It is certainly one of the most fun confectioneries you can make in the kitchen, it’s more akin to a science experiment thanks to the bicarbonate of soda that creates those tiny holes in the caramelised sugar.
The most exciting part of the recipe is when you add baking soda and your hot sugar syrup bubbles up like a volcano. Sodium bicarbonate is generally used in cakes because it helps cake rise by forming carbon dioxide due to the presence of an acid. In this case heat of the sugar causes the bicarbonate of soda to break down releasing carbon dioxide making your runny caramel bubble.
If you want to store honeycomb toffee for any period of time, storage is best done under dry conditions as sugars have a strong affinity for water and tend to absorb it on to the surface of the toffee, making the surface sticky.
Ingredients:
- 200 g (~1 cup) sugar
- 6 tbsp honey
- 2 tsp baking soda
Line a 24×24 cm (9″x9″) baking dish with parchment paper and grease thoroughly. Set aside two teaspoons of baking soda.
Place sugar and honey into a saucepan and start cooking over a low heat. Once your toffee begins to darken in colour and reaches light amber stage, remove it from the heat and quickly stir in baking soda.
The mixture will begin to expand, quickly pour it into the prepared pan and leave it to set for one to two hours.
Once the toffee has cooled and set, remove it from the pan and shatter the toffee into bite size pieces.
