Does that taste good?
Alright, I’m throwing in the towel.
Whenever I see a caramel or brittle recipe, I want to make some. The problem is my attempts always start positive and then end in a frustrating way.
Technically, I have made caramel, and I have made brittle, but not consistently. (This means I need to make them more often to improve.)
For example:
I made Chocolate Caramel Cookie Bites because Sarah from Light My Heart (Crystal Shores Book One) wanted to make candy with her daughter Kelsey. (They both have a chocolate love that teeters on the edge of being an addiction, LOL.) When I made the recipe, it was a success on multiple occasions, but I did have to fight with the caramel a couple of times. The caramel in the recipe needs to be a softball because I didn’t want to break any teeth with the delicious treat.
Wait, the Caramel recipes I’ve made have tasted good, so maybe I won’t throw in the towel for caramel yet.
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My honeycomb brittle is a different story…
While watching an episode of the FoodNetwork Baking Championship show, someone had made honeycomb brittle to place on top of the final product. It caught my eye for some reason, and I wanted to make a batch.
Since I can’t leave recipes alone, I thought a gingerbread honeycomb brittle would be delicious. It probably is, but read on to find out why I have no clue. (FYI: If you make it, let me know what you think, LOL.)
The basic honeycomb brittle recipe I found on several websites said to cook the candy to 300 degrees Fahrenheit. So, that’s what I was trying to do.
Honeycomb brittle also calls for baking soda at the very end because it will puff up the candy and give it that honeycomb feel.
We know we need to cook it to 300 degrees, and baking soda will be in the recipe. I made the recipe exactly like it was stated in the many recipes I found online because I was new to the dessert and didn’t want to mess it up.
Let’s count how many times I made honeycomb brittle in less than a week…
I attempted the gingerbread version of the recipe three separate times. Each time I made the recipe, I learned something new and applied those lessons to the next attempt. Unfortunately, it had a bitter taste each time, even when I was careful about the cooking time. It was bitter for my husband and didn’t taste right for me.
The first gingerbread honeycomb brittle attempt was spicy, not bitter because I added too much ginger and cinnamon. Way too much!
Then, the other two gingerbread honeycomb brittle attempts were bitter because of the spices and the total time it cooked.
That’s when I scrapped the gingerbread idea and made the simple honeycomb recipe without all the spices. I tried it two times and thought I finally made it correctly. I could smell the honey, and the first part of the bite was all honey on my palette.
But nope, it was still wrong. I let it sit overnight and then tried it again. I could taste the honey, but it ended with a bitter flavor.
I was ready to give up by this point, but I hated accepting defeat. So I attempted it twice, and that’s when I undercooked it because the candy was too soft and sticky. My teeth were begging me to throw it away.
Let’s back up a bit…
During my Nutritional Science degree, a dietitian I knew shared about these tablets; you can try to find out if you react to bitter or not. She was sharing how when she tried the tablet, she didn’t taste anything at all. Someone else had tried it, and it was extremely bitter.
My husband recently tried these tablets and quickly discovered he is very sensitive to bitter.
Back to the honeycomb brittle…
It’s possible I shouldn’t throw in the towel just yet because I may have made it right, but my husband was just sensitive to the recipe. My theory is whatever happens with the chemical reaction of the ingredients during the cook and then adding the baking soda, my husband reacts.
I’m sticking to that theory because he still tasted bitter the two times I undercooked the recipe, and I know it was not burnt.
Give me a few months to try again…
Alright, fine, I won’t throw in the towel.
I didn’t give up making French macarons even after trying to make them many times over the years with minimal success. Now, I can finally make one of my favorite cookies successfully.
Have you made honeycomb brittle? (If you did, did you have any odd experiences when sharing your recipe, like the person who tasted it told you it was bitter?)
Now that I finally got that out of my system, I need to make a few recipes I know I can make easily.
If you’d like to meet Sarah and Kelsey from Light My Heart (Crystal Shores Book One), you can read the first three chapters for free here, or you can grab the book here.
Plus, I share a fun email three days a week with silly stories of my book and recipe adventures. To be a part of the conversation, you can sign up here. When you sign up, you’ll get a free Five Recipe Cookbook + Five Page Recipe Journal inspired by the characters in my romance books.
