Sarah Cawood

Inside Sarahs Notebook

Hapless Homemade Honeycomb

Tuesday Dec 20, 2011

I feel like I am limping toward to finish line of 2011... Fighting off a cold, and rushing around like the proverbial blue arsed fly making sure everyone has their gifts in time for Christmas. I have a funny feeling that next year when our little one arrives, I may not have the time to make home made hampers so this year, I'm going out with a flourish!

I tried my hand at homemade honeycomb yesterday: I got the recipe from a fab book I got for Christmas last year: Gifts From The Kitchen. The recipe is fairly easy to follow but there's not enough detail about how things should look, how long they should take etc so I've got my adapted recipe for fellow Hapless Housewives here. My instructions spoon feed you, be warned, but at least you'll know where you've gone wrong if you go wrong, which I did! When you have to add the bicarbonate of soda and whisk up the mixture you have to be QUICK! Not swift, but REALLY FRICKING FAST! Literally, add the bicarb, whisk it in and get that mixture poured onto the foil lined baking tray in about 5-10 seconds. That way, you'll get the light honeycomb with all the air bubbles. I only got it right second time I tried. The first time (as you can see from my pictures!) I took too long whisking the mixture and it didn't pour out of the pan easily, was a bit viscous and I was left with a solid lump of sugary sweet yuckiness in the pan that was a right bugger to get off.

It was very satisfying when I finally got it right though and it's delicious: I can definitely recommend it as a lovely homemade gift to give. It's dead cheap to make too and you may even have everything you need to make it in your cupboard.

I'm taking my finished product to the peeps at Red Bee Media tomorrow where I voice all the promos for the Really channel. (Sky 248 if you're interested!)

I'll let you know what the feedback is;).

So, that's about the last of the making of gifts this year. My nephew wants some coconut ice for Christmas (he's easily pleased, bless him) so I'm doing that on Xmas eve. That's really easy too and no baking or cooking is necessary. You just need icing sugar, pink food colouring, condensed milk and desiccated coconut.

I'm doing a wrapping special in the next couple of days. You don't need to spend a fortune wrapping gifts and you can make most gifts look really special, really easily. I have so many gifts to wrap that I invariably do lots of different themes to liven it up a bit. I've taken photos of all my 'themes' for you anyway. If you care;).

I hope you lot are all sprinting toward that finish line and if, like me, you're more tortoise than hare, then take it easy and make sure you don't get ill just in time for Xmas. Apparently, it's wise to wind down slowly as you approach the holiday season and not run yourself ragged then relax on Christmas Eve since your body will be an open house to bugs as soon as you relax, so let's all start the wind down now and sack off the rest of the week;). Laters!

Sx