Yield: 12 pieces

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.

Prep Time10 minutes

Cook Time15 minutes

Cooling and setting (a source says 1 to 2 hours)1 hour

Total Time1 hour 25 minutes

Ingredients

Honeycomb

• 1 1/4 cups (250 g) granulated sugar, 250 g at 200 g per cup (USDA)
• 1/2 cup (170 g) honey, 170 g at 339 g per cup (USDA); not for infants under 1 year
• 1 tbsp (13.8 g) food-grade, aluminum-free baking soda, 13.8 g (3 tsp at 4.6 g); fresh, and sifted just before it goes in
• 1 tsp vanilla extract, about 5 ml; optional
• pinch salt, not weighed

Instructions

Prepare

1. Set up. Line the pan with parchment. Sift the baking soda into a small bowl and keep it, the vanilla and the salt next to the stove. Once the syrup is at temperature, there is no time to measure.

Cook and foam

1. Melt the sugar and honey. Put the sugar and honey in the large pot over medium heat. Melt low and slow, stirring gently only until the sugar looks dissolved, and clip the candy thermometer to the side.
2. Cook to hard crack. Cook until the thermometer reads 300-310 F (149-154 C). Lower that target by 1 F for every 500 feet above sea level. Watch the thermometer, not the color.
3. Add the soda. Take the pot off the heat. Stir in the salt and vanilla, then sift the baking soda over the syrup and stir only until it disappears. The foam climbs fast. It will look wrong. Keep going, but stop stirring early.
4. Pour without spreading. Pour the foam straight into the lined pan. Do not spread it with a spatula, because that pops the bubbles and the candy sets as dense brittle.

Set

1. Cool undisturbed. Leave the honeycomb alone until it is fully cool and hard. A source says 1 to 2 hours; this card counts the short end.
2. Break and store. Break the slab into pieces and move them to an airtight container right away, because honeycomb takes moisture from the air.

Notes

The ratios follow A Cozy Kitchen's corn-syrup-free honeycomb (1 tablespoon soda, 1 1/4 cups sugar, 1/2 cup honey, a pinch of salt, 1 teaspoon vanilla). We moved the target temperature from its 295 F to the 300-310 F hard-crack range of the Exploratorium.

That source lists no water, so the card has none. Melt gently.

Gram weights are our conversions from USDA FoodData Central: 1 cup sugar 200 g, 1 cup honey 339 g, 1 teaspoon baking soda 4.6 g.

Prep and cook times are our estimates; no source gives them. The yield of 12 pieces is our serving size, not a sourced figure.

The order of steps and the heat level are our assembly of the three published recipes, not a tested method, and this ratio at 300-310 F is not a tested pairing.

Celsius and milliliter figures are our conversions.

Nutrition values are estimates calculated from typical USDA FoodData Central values for granulated sugar, honey and baking soda, per 1 of 12 pieces. Vanilla and the pinch of salt are not counted. All the sodium from the baking soda is assumed to stay in the candy.