Honeycomb toffee

Honeycomb toffee is simple to make. It is a crisp, golden toffee riddled with tiny bubbles, so it shatters when you bite it and then melts away. In Britain it is often called cinder toffee.

How the bubbles get there

The main ingredients are brown sugar or a syrup such as golden syrup, corn syrup or molasses, and bicarbonate of soda. Sometimes an acid such as vinegar is added too. When the bicarbonate of soda is stirred into the hot syrup, it produces carbon dioxide gas, either by reacting with the acid or simply by breaking down in the heat. The syrup is so thick that the gas is trapped, and the whole mixture foams up. The sponge like structure forms while the sugar is still liquid, and then the toffee sets hard around the bubbles.

Because the recipe is so simple and quick, honeycomb can be made at home. See how to make honeycomb toffee.

Cinder toffee

In Britain the traditional name is cinder toffee. It is usually cooked a little longer than plain honeycomb, often with golden syrup, which gives a richer, more caramelised flavour and a texture that is both crunchy and a little chewy.

A sweet with many names

The same sweet goes by many names. It is:

• cinder toffee or honeycomb in Britain
• puff candy in Scotland
• hokey pokey in New Zealand, where it is stirred into hokey pokey ice cream
• sponge toffee in Canada
• sponge candy in parts of the northern United States, where it is usually covered in chocolate
• fairy food or angel food candy in Wisconsin
• Turkish honey in Hungary, where it is sold at town fairs

In Japan a version called karumeyaki, from the Portuguese word for caramel, is often sold by street vendors, and in South Korea a similar sweet, dalgona, was a popular street snack in the 1970s and 1980s.

Honeycomb in chocolate

Honeycomb is also made commercially, sold in small blocks or covered in chocolate. In Britain there is the Crunchie bar, and in Australia the Violet Crumble.

Its Irish cousin

In Northern Ireland, the Ould Lammas Fair in Ballycastle is associated with yellowman, a crunchy, golden honeycomb toffee: see yellowman.

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