Cinder toffee, honeycomb, hokey pokey. Whatever you call it, I just made it!

Today I learnt that something that I expected to be difficult, scary and messy was actually simple, exciting and not all that messy. Valuable life lesson.

I wanted to make cinder toffee because I saw Nigella Lawson make it on TV a couple of years back - she said it was the perfect gift to take when you are a guest in someone's house since flowers have to have a vase found and chocolates often just get put to one side, but according to her nobody can resist hokeypokey (classic Nigella innuendo!). Now, I'm thinking that wine is a pretty good thing to take to somebody's house, but I suppose it can be a minefield and it's not appropriate for all times of day. So cinder toffee seemed like a good thing to be able to make. The only trouble was that it looked quite scary - the bubbling up process looked like the kind of thing I could come away from with third-degree burns. And I'd been told to use a pan that I never wanted to use again because it would be forever scarred by toffee remains. As it turns out, it's easy to make, exciting like making proper popcorn, and easy to clean (the potential for burning myself silly still remains, but I think I can manage to be careful long enough to make it again).

So, step one, assemble the recipe and ingredients:

Credit here goes to Nigella Lawson's "Nigella Express" for the recipe.
Step 2: weigh out the sugar and syrup

Step 3: mix the sugar and syrup. This is the only time you are allowed to stir, Nigella says that once it's on the heat there is to be no stirring. This stage made me nervous because it doesn't have so much of a stirring consistency as a big lump of stickiness consistency...

Step 4: turn on the heat and let it start to melt, turn to goo, then start to bubble away...

Step 5: turn off the heat and whisk in the bicarb of soda. This is where it should be a 'whooshing cloud of aerated pale gold'...

Finally: pour straight out onto baking parchment and leave to cool (and stick the pan in a bowl of soapy water!)

That was the first go. That cooled and remained a sticky, stretchy, gooey kind of toffee. It was bubbly, but it was just one big slab that didn't break but just stretched. So second time around I let the sugar and syrup bubble much more before pouring in the bicarb of soda and it was a lot more whooshy and has puffed up on the tray...

So now I am waiting to see if this one sets hard and then bring on the chocolate!

Now, in the interests of honesty, I should admit that I started writing this post while the first lot of toffee was setting, or rather, not setting. Ah, I was feeling so smug and 'oh life lessons' and it was all soooo premature! But the second set does appear to have set, so let's reconsider the life lessons - I shouldn't have given in to fear the first time around: I didn't let the sugar bubble up enough because I was afraid of it either burning or bubbling over and burning me. Now, I'm thinking that this was a rational fear, so the lesson is not necessarily to resist fear, but that we can always learn from our mistakes.

Whatever the lesson, I've made cinder toffee!!