Yield: 12 pieces

Honeycomb Candy Tastes Like Baking Soda? Causes and Fixes

A symptom table for bitter, soapy and metallic honeycomb, published soda doses in grams per 100 g of sugar, and a lower-dose recipe in US and metric units. Dosed from sources, not tested by us.

Prep Time10 minutes

Cook Time15 minutes

Cooling and setting (our estimate)1 hour

Total Time1 hour 25 minutes

Ingredients

Honeycomb

• 1 1/4 cups (250 g) granulated sugar, 250 g at 200 g per cup
• 1/2 cup (170 g) honey, 170 g and about 120 ml; our conversion
• 1 1/2 tsp (6.9 g) food-grade, aluminum-free baking soda, 6.9 g at 4.6 g per tsp; 2.8 g per 100 g of sugar; fresh, sifted just before use
• 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, then 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. Our method: put the sugar and honey in the pot over medium heat, melt low and slow, and stir gently only until the sugar looks dissolved. Clip the thermometer to the side.
2. Cook to 300 F. Cook until the thermometer reads 300 F (149 C), the bottom of the hard-crack range, and take the pot off the heat. Do not drift past 310 F (154 C). Subtract 1 F for every 500 feet above sea level.
3. Add the soda. Stir in the salt and vanilla, then sift the baking soda over the syrup. The syrup foams up quickly; stop stirring as soon as no dry streaks of soda remain. One source says that takes 20 to 30 seconds.
4. Pour without spreading. Pour the foam straight into the lined pan and do not spread it.

Set

1. Cool undisturbed. Leave the slab alone until it is fully cool and hard. This card counts 60 minutes, which is our estimate.
2. Break and store. Our method: break the slab into pieces and move them to an airtight container right away.

Notes

Not tested by us. The soda dose is our choice, set in the low part of the published range (2.3 to 3.3 g per 100 g of sugar). The sugar and honey amounts follow A Cozy Kitchen's corn-syrup-free honeycomb.

Cooking to 300 F follows the Exploratorium hard-crack range, not A Cozy Kitchen's 295 F. We omitted the cream of tartar that Cake by Courtney uses.

Prep, cook and cooling times and the yield of 12 pieces are our estimates. Gram and milliliter figures are our conversions at 200 g per cup of sugar and 4.6 g per teaspoon of soda.

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