Honey and Baking Soda Honeycomb (No Corn Syrup)

A honey-forward sponge candy with no corn syrup: ratios in US and metric units, a hard-crack temperature chart with altitude steps, sodium in the nutrition, and fixes for chewy or sticky batches.

Honey and baking soda honeycomb is a corn-syrup-free sponge candy made from 1 1/4 cups sugar, 1/2 cup honey and 1 tablespoon baking soda, cooked to 300-310 F. It takes about 1 hour 25 minutes, mostly cooling, and keeps honey as the only liquid sweetener.

Pull the syrup early and you get chewy. Stir too long and you get brittle. The rest of this page is about those two moments.

What this version changes

• No corn syrup: sugar and honey only.
• One temperature chart in F and C, with an altitude step.
• A failure table for chewy, sticky, flat and soda-tasting batches.

Prep 10 minutes, cook 15 minutes, cool 60 minutes. About 1 hour 25 minutes in all, and prep and cook are our estimates.

Honey is not for infants under one year of age, according to ANSES, the French food safety agency, because of infant botulism.

The Food Science / Lab Kitchen Note

Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate. Heat breaks it down and gives off carbon dioxide, and acid makes it react too. Honey is acidic, with a pH of about 3.70 to 4.20 according to Kansas State University, while sugar is neutral at 7.0. So a honey syrup gives the soda a little acid to react with.

Only a little, though. Kansas State's baking rule is 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda per cup of honey, and that is a baking rule, not a candy rule. For the 1/2 cup of honey on this card, the rule works out to 1/4 teaspoon by our calculation. The card uses 3 teaspoons, about 12 times that. By our calculation, the card's soda far exceeds what the honey's acid could use, so most of the gas probably comes from the heat.

The temperature matters because of what is left in the pot. The Exploratorium puts hard crack at 300-310 F, where the syrup is about 99 percent sugar. At that point almost no water remains. The foam gets trapped in sugar that sets glassy and brittle instead of chewy. Soft crack, at 270-290 F, still holds water, which is a likely reason for chewy honeycomb.

Temperature chart: US and metric, with altitude

The stage figures come from the Exploratorium. The altitude rule is theirs too: subtract 1 F for every 500 feet above sea level. The rows for each elevation are our arithmetic, with Celsius rounded to the nearest degree.

One more thing before you trust any number on any page. What's Cooking America pulls honeycomb at 285 F and calls that hard crack. That conflicts with the Exploratorium, where 285 F falls inside soft crack. This card keeps 300-310 F. A Cozy Kitchen, whose ratios we follow, heats to 295 F, which is also below the range.

Three published honeycomb recipes, side by side

This is a comparison of published data, not a record of batches we cooked. The grams are our conversions unless the source gave them. Where nothing was sourced, the cell says so.

Two notes on the math. Cake by Courtney lists 2 1/2 teaspoons as 10 g; at 4.6 g per teaspoon from USDA, that amount would be 11.5 g, or 3.3 g per 100 g of sugar. And honey is a small share in two of the three recipes. Only A Cozy Kitchen goes honey-forward without corn syrup, which is why the card follows it.

Common mistakes

Pulling the syrup early. Many cooks who end up with chewy honeycomb say the syrup came off the heat too soon, and they point to a candy thermometer rather than color. Clip it on, and wait for 300-310 F.

Stirring too long or spreading the foam. Both pop the bubbles, and the candy then sets as dense brittle. Stir only until the soda disappears, pour, and leave the pan alone.

Using a small pot. The mixture foams to a large volume, and cooks suggest a big pot and separate batches for large amounts. This card is one small batch, so size the pot for the foam, not for the syrup.

Substitutes and swaps

Nutrition note: calories and sodium per piece

Values on the recipe card are estimates calculated from typical USDA FoodData Central figures, for one of 12 pieces. The sugar line uses 387 kcal and 99.8 g of sugars per 100 g. The honey line uses USDA's honey (SR Legacy): 304 kcal, 82.1 g of sugars and 4 mg of sodium per 100 g. Vanilla and the pinch of salt are left out.

That comes to about 124 calories, 32.4 g of sugars and 316 mg of sodium per piece. Nearly all of the sodium is the baking soda. USDA lists it at 27,400 mg per 100 g, about 1,260 mg per teaspoon at 4.6 g. By our calculation, the 3 teaspoons on the card hold about 3,780 mg in the whole batch, and we assume all of it stays in the candy.

Where these numbers come from

The hard-crack range, the soft-crack range and the altitude rule come from the Exploratorium's page on sugar stages, a science museum resource. The honey pH and the 1/2 teaspoon per cup baking rule are from Kansas State University. The nutrition inputs come from USDA FoodData Central, for baking soda, honey and granulated sugar. The advice on infants is from ANSES.

The three recipes in the comparison are blog pages, not tested by us: A Cozy Kitchen, Crayons and Cravings and Cake by Courtney. We adapted an idea, not their text. The tips on sifting the soda, using a large pot and storing airtight appear on all three pages. We found no scientific study on honeycomb, so none is cited.

Storing honeycomb

Honeycomb soaks up moisture from the air and turns sticky or soft, according to cooks across several pages, so it needs an airtight container and goes best on a dry day. The storage figures belong to the blogs, not to a food-safety authority. Crayons and Cravings says it keeps up to 5 days airtight and recommends eating it in the first 1 to 2 days. Cake by Courtney says airtight and gives no duration.

We found no sourced guidance on freezing, reheating or rescuing candy that has already gone sticky, so this page gives none.

Troubleshooting

If a batch fails, it is almost always the thermometer or the stirring. Check those two first.