Why does honeycomb not set

This is ok. More color will be formed in the next step. This is done by adding baking soda. Baking soda is a commonly used leavening agent in cakes, pancakes, and many more products. It works the same in those products as it does in honeycomb.

The chemical name for baking soda is sodium bicarbonate NaHCO 3. When sodium bicarbonate reacts with an acid it will react to form carbon dioxide, which is a gas. This gas is formed all throughout the honeycomb and expands the sugar solution, creating a lot of air bubbles!

The higher the temperature, the faster this reaction happens. Since the sugar solution for a honeycomb is pretty hot, it all happens very quickly. Since the temperatures are so high, only a little acid is required for the reaction to happen rapidly. Caramelization of sugar is a complex series of a lot of chemical reactions all taking place at the same.

However, it is sped up when the pH is acidic or alkaline. By adding baking soda which is alkaline to the sugar solution you help accelerate these reactions. As a result, your honeycomb can turn a lot browner. At the same time, your honeycomb might also turn a light yellow during expansion. In the gif above you could see that transformation. This is caused by the incorporation of air bubbles. Air bubbles reflect the light differently than a solid mass of sugar would. As a result, the honeycomb turns a lighter color!

Getting the quantity of baking soda right is important to get the right number and size of air bubbles. You can also add too much baking soda though! If you add too much so many air bubbles are formed that a lot of them will escape from the honeycomb before it has time to set.

Also, you run the risk of not all the baking soda reacting and leaving behind a very metallic aftertaste. The last seemingly simple, but crucial, step is cooling down the honeycomb. While the honeycomb cools that glass like structure has to be formed. The liquid sugar syrup turns into a glass. It will take too long for the center to cool down, causing the gas to escape. Only during cooling will you be able to see if you prepared the sugar syrup properly. Does the honeycomb not turn solid but remain soft?

Deeper ramekins or cake tins for instance help create a thick honeycomb whereas spreading it out on a tray makes a thinner honeycomb. Experiment with the best format for your purpose. For honeycomb to form that glass structure you need a good amount of sucrose to be present. Sucrose can form that glass and provide hardness. As such, you need to add something to prevent the sugar from crystallizing.

To help prevent the sucrose from crystallizing, you can add a sugar syrup. That sugar syrup will contain other sugars aside from sucrose which help to prevent it from crystallizing.

There are a lot of options here that can work, each will make a honeycomb with a slightly different flavor profile. Glucose syrup called corn syrup in the US is made from starches that have been broken down partially. As such, it contains small sugars like glucose and fructose, as well as longer chains of sugars. This mix of carbohydrates has a few advantages. The main one being that those long chains prevent the crystallization of sucrose.

Glucose syrup itself is bland in flavor and is slightly less sweet than sucrose, making for a moderate sweet honeycomb. In the Netherlands you can find a special sugar syrup called schenkstroop which translates as pouring syrup. This syrup is dark in color and has quite a strong unique flavor but is very different from molasses.

We tried making honeycomb with this syrup and that works very well. The English word sugar comes from the Arabic imitation of the Sanskrit sharkara , meaning gravel, which early sugar resembled. By the Spaniards were operating a number of sugar plantations on Hispaniola present day Dominican Republic and Haiti and in that year began the transatlantic slave trade. Slaves were required to tender this historically labour intensive crop. In Europe sugar remained a luxury until the 17th century.

Despite the avalanche of sugar that was reaching Europe at the beginning of the 19th century Napoleon ordered that thousands of hectares of French land be planted with sugar beets.

This was done to avoid dependence on English controlled sugar imports from the New World. Sugar beet is a root crop in the same family as beetroot and mangelwurzel; it is generally grown in developed temperate countries whereas sugarcane is produced principally in developing tropical countries. The simplest method of consuming cane sugar is by chewing the cane itself. Once the tough outer bark has been stripped away the softer woody inside can be chewed and sucked to extract the sweetness.

To convert this sweet liquid into crystalline sugar the canes are cut, shredded and crushed between rollers to extract the opaque dark-green juice. The juice is the colour of swamp mud and tastes of liquid brown sugar, heavy with caramel and molasses and with a harsh green, sap like after-taste. This juice is then heated and lime added. The heat and lime coagulate and remove proteins and other impurities from the juice.

The resulting clear juice is then concentrated by evaporation and boiling until what is known as a massecuite — a mixture of sugar crystals and syrup molasses — emerges. The separation of this mixture was traditionally performed in upright conical pots and the molasses allowed to drain over several days if not weeks though a hole in the base of the pot.

This left a yellowish sugar loaf which was often still moist from residual molasses. Further refining of the sugar occurs in various stages ending in a final crystallisation process which is carefully controlled to give individual crystals of uniform size.

Scientifically, the word sugar refers to a number of carbohydrates of varying sweetness which are made from just three kinds of atoms: carbon, hydrogen and oxygen.

The simplest single sugar molecules are refered to as monosaccharides, these include glucose and fructose. The chemical that we call table sugar is sucrose, this is a double sugar or disaccaride molecule consisting of one molecule of glucose and one of fructose joined together.

The sucrose in sugarcane is the stored form of the energy obtained by photosynthesis; many plants store this energy as starch.

Before they can be absorbed and used by the body disaccharides and polysaccarides such as starch must be broken down into glucose. This glucose is then "burned" or oxidised in tissues to produce energy releasing carbon dioxide and water. Glucose and fructose are also found independently in nature.

Glucose is found in some fruits and vegetables, usually with other sugars. Fructose, as the name implies, is found mainly in fruits and is the sweetest of the common sugars.

Many of us indulge to excess in those things that give us pleasure. In the case of sugar this has led to people preaching a prohibition on sugar and so a feeling of guilt for liking and eating sweets.

For me eating confectionery should and will always be a pleasure and making your own sweets an even greater pleasure. One of the simplest and most fun confectioneries to make at home is cinder toffee, also known as honeycomb or sponge toffee. Step 1 Mix the caster sugar and golden syrup together in a heavy bottomed pan large enough to accommodate the rising sugar when it bubbles up.

The hard dry nature of caster sugar seemingly stands apart from the shiny viscous texture of golden syrup but they are both just forms of sugar. Caster sugar is crystallised sucrose and golden syrup is a thick, amber-coloured form of "inverted" sugar syrup that was invented in by Scottish businessman Abram Lyle.

An inverted sugar is a thick and treacly mixture of separated fructose and glucose and is formed when a solution of sucrose is heated; particularly in the presence of an acid. Certain enzymes will do the same thing, for example invertase in the small intestine.

Inverted sugars occur naturally in honey and are produced in jams during the boiling of fruit with sugar due to the high acidity. Golden syrup is a mixture of sucrose, invert sugar, water and salts. Save recipe. By Sarah Cook. Preparation and cooking time. Prep: 5 mins Cook: 10 mins - 15 mins Plus setting. Share on facebook. Share on twitter. Share on pinterest. Email to a friend.

Ingredients butter, for the tin g caster sugar 5 tbsp golden syrup 2 tsp bicarbonate of soda Method STEP 1 Butter a 20cm square tin. Comments, questions and tips Rate this recipe What is your star rating out of 5? Choose the type of message you'd like to post Choose the type of message you'd like to post.