Amazing Honeycomb/Cinder Toffee

Having purchased THIS BOOK from the Book People, I was dying to try something. I settled on the Cinder Toffee recipe. Mostly because I didn't need to shop for extra ingredients.

I bought myself a Tala Confectionary Thermometer and set to work.

The recipe was fairly straight forward but there was a lot of faffing with warm water and the suchlike and you all know how much I LOVE the faffing...

My syrup reached 'Hard crack' I ice bathed it and stirred in my dissolved Bicarb. Floof. Excellent I thought. Until it cooled. It was powdery and soft. Not at all crunchy in that Crunchie-bar way I was hoping for. The flavour was spot-on but it was all powdery and nasty :-(

Fail!Toffee

What did I do wrong? The temp was right, the quantities were correct. I turned to the internet to find out what went wrong and stumbled across THIS blog post. When I saw that it was a Nigella Recipe I was immediately hooked. Nigella stuff ALWAYS goes well in our kitchen and my Nigella chocolate fudge is a huge hit. So I tried it.

I made a minor modification in that instead of 'guessing' the temperature, I used my Confectionary Thermometer to heat the syrup to 'Hard crack' as per the first recipe.

Perfection. It floofed like a dream and there was barely any faff at all! Verdict? Nigella wins again.

Lovely and crisp and delicious!

I'm off to coat it in dark chocolate now!

Ready for Coating... Mmm

Lex.