Honeycomb for Sweet Salty Bars

Asked by ruthdev. Answered on 13th January 2014

Full question

Can the honeycomb candy in Nigella's recipe for Hokey Pokey be used the in the Sweet And Salty Crunch Nut Bars?

Whenever I make Hokey Pokey (honeycomb), the texture always comes out wrong (but the taste is fine). It is always very brittle and sticks to your teeth, and if you try to dislodge it from your teeth using your tongue it hurts your tongue. Clearly I'm doing something wrong, but I'm not sure what. It also loses a lot of it's aeration between being poured into a tin and setting. Help?!

Our answer

Nigella's Sweet and Salty Crunch Nut Bars (from Kitchen) are a type of rocky road chocolate bar, with salted peanuts and crushed Crunchie bars mixed into melted chocolate. Crunchie bars are chocolate-coated honeycomb candy bars that are sold in the UK, though can be more difficult to find elsewhere.

It is possible to use home-made honeycomb (also known as sponge candy or cinder toffee), such as Nigella's Hokey Pokey (from Nigella Express and on the Nigella website). The bars require 160g Crunchie bars in total, so you would need to make a double quantity of the Hokey Pokey recipe to ensure that you have enough honeycomb.

When making the Hokey Pokey make sure that you cook the sugar and syrup mixture for long enough, as the cooking time will vary according to the size of the pan. If you don't cook it for long enough then the candy will be chewy rather than crisp. The sugar needs to reach "hard crack" stage. It will be a rich brown colour (simialr to maple syrup) though not quite as dark brown as a caramel. If you have a sugar or candy thermometer then it will be between 150-160c/300-310F.