Sugary delight

We had a great day in the kitchen yesterday, making some sugary delights for Christmas and New Year. First we tackled creating honeycomb, which I wanted for making honeycomb ice cream with - the type you don’t need an ice cream maker for. For the honeycomb you need to be brave. Everything you read online says do not stir the sugar, however I find that if you don’t the melted sugar, which is underneath the unmelted sugar, can burn easily. So I find some gentle stirring to incorporate the sugar grains into the hot melted sugar works just fine. You need to watch it until it’s going just golden, then take it off the heat and add the bicarbonate of soda in, quickly stirring in with a wooden spoon. Careful as the melted sugar is really hot, and when you add the bicarb it erupts like molten lava, puffing up in the pan. You need to work really quickly, and scrape it out onto a chilled baking sheet with baking parchment on it, this helps cool it quickly. It’s best to pop it in the freezer then, to stop it cooking and potentially burning.

200g of castor sugar, two teaspoons of bicarbonate of soda

Perfect. Once it’s made then comes the ice cream bit, which is really easy. Whip up 1pt of double cream into soft peaks, stir in a 300g tin of condensed milk, then stir in the broken up honeycomb - it’s all very sweet, so add to your taste. Then pop into a container and freeze. It really is gorgeous, especially with a little snifter of your favourite liqueur.

I also have a recipe for some German biscuits typically made at Christmas, however I don’t have any candied peel which I need for them, so Brian offered to make some. It was a bit fiddly, which Brian is thankfully fine with. It smelt gorgeous whilst he was cooking it and we now have some sticky sweet tasting candied orange peel. Exactly what I needed.