Why Is My Honeycomb Candy Chewy? Causes and Fixes

A cause, sign and fix table for chewy honeycomb, the water and hard crack chemistry behind it, and a card in US and metric units. Adapted from published recipes, not tested by us.

Honeycomb candy that turns chewy is usually syrup taken off the heat too soon; this card of sugar, light corn syrup, water and baking soda is cooked to 300 F (150 C), poured fast and cooled, about 1 hour 25 minutes in all.

Nobody on our team has made or tasted it. The card is our adaptation of published recipes, built to avoid the chewy result, and it is not a guarantee. It starts from the base batch on Food Crumbles, and the chewy diagnosis leans on Tales From The Kitchen Shed, which we adapted and did not copy.

• A cause, sign and fix table, so you can match what you see to what went wrong.
• A short chemistry note on water, hard crack and sugar that grabs moisture from the air.
• A small card with US and metric units and a sodium figure.

If the problem is flavor and not texture, why honeycomb candy tastes like baking soda covers the dose. For a version with no foam at all, see honeycomb candy without baking soda.

Why honeycomb gets chewy: cause, sign and fix

Many cooks report the same first suspect. The syrup came off the heat too early, so the candy kept water and never reached a crisp set. Five sources point to a thermometer and the hard crack range, and one adds that a batch pulled at the right temperature set hard for a reader.

Moisture is the second suspect. Many cooks report that honeycomb pulls water from the air, so it softens and goes sticky after setting. Their advice matches: skip humid days, cool fully, then seal it airtight. One author warns about humid climates, and another notes that uncovered pieces went tough within days.

Too much heat has its own cost. Overcooked syrup can taste burnt or bitter, and we found no sourced number for where that starts. The Exploratorium range stops at 310 F, so the fix is to take the pot off before it drifts past that.

The Food Science / Lab Kitchen Note

Sugar syrup is a water problem. The Exploratorium lists soft crack at 270-290 F (about 132-143 C) with the syrup about 95 percent sugar, and hard crack at 300-310 F (about 149-154 C) at about 99 percent sugar. By our reading, that leaves roughly 5 percent water at soft crack and about 1 percent at hard crack. Pull the pot at soft crack and the candy still holds several times more water, which is what a chewy bite is.

Food Crumbles, a single hobby science blog, makes the same point. Undercooked syrup stays soft because water is left in it. Its own math puts the base batch at about 15 percent water going into the pot, from 25 g of water in roughly 170 g of batch.

Baking soda is the foam. In hot syrup it gives off carbon dioxide, and the bubbles set in place as the syrup stiffens. By our reading, a syrup that still holds water stays loose, so the bubbles can collapse or merge, and the candy sets soft.

Sugar then keeps working against you. Honeycomb is hygroscopic, which means it absorbs moisture quickly, per Food Crumbles. A candy that set dry can still turn chewy on the counter. That is why the cooling and sealing steps on the card matter as much as the temperature.

The card's sodium comes almost entirely from the soda. The full calculation is in the nutrition note below.

Three syrups compared: what the sources report

This is a comparison of published data, not a record of batches we cooked. Where nothing in our sources covers a cell, it says so.

None of these pages runs the three syrups side by side. Food Crumbles is the only one that ties honey and golden syrup to stickiness, and it is a single source.

Substitutes and swaps

Common mistakes

Pulling the pot early. The syrup looks amber, so you stop. The thermometer says it is not there yet. Keep going until the number, then take the pot off the heat.

Setting the target too low. Some recipes stop at 295 F. Tales From The Kitchen Shed puts the hard crack range at 146-155 C (295-310 F) and says candy taken off before at least 146 C (295 F) is chewy or sticky. The Exploratorium starts at 300 F, which is why our card uses it. Ask Nigella lists 150-160 C (300-310 F).

Leaving the pieces out. Hygroscopic sugar picks up water fast. Food Crumbles says to cool to room temperature, about an hour for its batch, before sealing airtight, and not to leave honeycomb out overnight in humid weather.

Storing honeycomb airtight

Keep the pieces airtight at room temperature, with parchment between layers, and do not put plain honeycomb in the fridge. Many cooks report that cold, humid air softens it, and a recipe author doubts a reader's two-week fridge plan. A chocolate coating can act as a moisture barrier, but we found no sourced data on how well.

The sources disagree on how long it lasts. Hill Country Chocolate says uncoated pieces keep about a week airtight at room temperature. Food Crumbles says airtight honeycomb keeps a few weeks. Tales From The Kitchen Shed claims up to 3 months or longer, and 6 months in her jars. Treat the last as one blog's claim, since it conflicts with the others.

The freezer is also disputed. Hill Country Chocolate says freezing helps keep the crunch, while another page does not recommend cold storage at all. We have no sourced way to bring sticky pieces back, and no sourced reheating method, so a fresh batch on a dry day is the safe route.

How the sources hold up

The temperature stages, the sugar percentages and the altitude rule come from the Exploratorium's page on sugar stages, a science museum resource. The sodium and sugar figures come from USDA FoodData Central, a government nutrient database, for baking soda, granulated sugar and light corn syrup.

Everything else is recipe-site opinion. Ask Nigella is a reader Q&A page on a celebrity cook's site, and it does not mention humidity. Tales From The Kitchen Shed, A Cozy Kitchen and Hill Country Chocolate are recipe blogs, and Hill Country is inconsistent on soda amounts. Food Crumbles is a single hobby source, so read its claims as one cook's account. We found no scientific study on chewy honeycomb, so none is cited, and the mechanism on this page is our reading of the sourced numbers.

Nutrition note: calories and sodium per piece

Values on the card are estimates calculated from typical USDA FoodData Central values for granulated sugar (387 kcal and 99.8 g of sugars per 100 g), light corn syrup (283 kcal calculated and 76.8 g of sugars per 100 g) and baking soda. The calculation uses light corn syrup, not a different syrup. It is our own math, not a lab measurement.

The batch comes to about 512 kcal, 134 g of sugars and 658 mg of sodium. For the sodium, USDA lists baking soda at 27,400 mg per 100 g, so 2.3 g carries about 630 mg; the corn syrup adds a little more and the sugar almost none. Divided by 8 pieces, that is about 64 calories, 16.7 g of sugars and 82 mg of sodium per piece. A Cozy Kitchen's 234 kcal per sheet is for a different recipe and yield, so it is not a like-for-like.

If a batch still comes out chewy, check three things in order: the temperature you pulled it at, the weather that day, and where the pieces sat afterward.