Have you ever heard someone talk about something that you knew you would love? Even when you had no idea what it even was? I have!
I was recently visiting with my sister and aunt. Aunt Vicki had the amazing opportunity of living in the UK for several years while her husband was on a job assignment. My sister Kathy was lucky enough to “holiday” with my aunt in the UK. They had a marvelous time, touring and eating, and then eating some more.
Since then there’s been a log of talk about foods they loved from their travels. Some kind of pudding and whether licking the bowl was acceptable, and honeycomb ice cream, “The best ice cream I’ve ever had”.
Me: “Honeycomb ice cream? What is that? What’s in it? Honeycomb”? (The food blogger in me is wanting to know more).
Kathy: “I don’t think so, that would just be wax”.
Me: “Maybe it’s just honey”?
Kathy: “I don’t know, it had little crystals in it that melted in your mouth”.
Needless to say I was intrigued, and after asking everyone I knew (or at least 3 people), I realized that nobody knew what honeycomb ice cream was. After a little research I found a few recipes, mostly from the BBC, and a couple from Australia. I’ve since deduced that honeycomb ice cream is kind of a British thing. Note: We do have a wonderful Englishman here at Bosch Mixers. His name is Bob. I should have asked Bob about this amazing ice cream. I didn’t. Next time I’ll ask Bob.
Honeycomb ice cream is basically a vanilla based ice cream with honeycomb, the homemade candy kind of honeycomb, crushed and added at the end. I have to admit I was pretty excited to try it.
Homemade honeycomb is a bit of a science experiment. Simple ingredients, easy to make, with a surprise chemical reaction at the end.
Heat the ingredients to 300˚, remove from the burner, and add the baking soda. The soda causes a chemical reaction and the syrup foams and expands. Once you pour the honeycomb into the pan it cools into a delicious light, brittle candy that literally melts in your mouth. The candy is full of tiny holes, hence the name honeycomb. The recipe below actually has a little honey included, although you don’t really need it.
Any vanilla ice cream recipe would work for honeycomb ice cream. I’ve used the custard one below and our no-cook vanilla recipe also.
The ice cream maker attachment is so easy to use. No need to freeze the bowl, just plop it in the mixer bowl and let it go. 20-30 minutes to fresh homemade ice cream.
So, how was it? I finished this ice cream late at night, and refused to let my hubby have any. I had to get some photos and videos of the finished product. He was not happy with me, at all! The next day when I was taking the blog photos I caught him eating the ice cream right out of the container with no intentions of stopping.
It’s so good! A slight honey-caramel flavor, and sugar crystals that melt in your mouth. It reminds me of pralines and cream ice cream without the nuts, if that makes any sense. You have got to try this one, and let me know what you think about it.
Note: The honeycomb will melt into the ice cream so I like to leave it in larger bits, and I really loved sprinkling a bit of the crushed honeycomb over top of the ice cream when it was served.