Honeycomb

So tonight, as one of my other (as yet undisclosed) creative projects was frustrating me to the limit, I decided to make honeycomb. It is one of the shortest recipes in Baking Made Easy, and people seem to make it together with their children, so how hard could it be, right?
I used this recipe by Lorraine Pascale, only I used my cookbook, not the website. "Golden syrup" does not exist in the Netherlands, so I used normal syrup, and "bicarbonate of soda" I was unable to find anywhere, but as it is also called E500 (ii), and that is the same thing that is in my normal baking powder, I decided to use that.

Has anybody noticed how ever since I started this blog, all my baking projects have turned out like a disaster? Or is it just me?

Anyway, I did all Lorraine said, but the ingredients refused to cooperate. To begin with, the sugar did not dissolve, it just floated there in a mass of boiling butter and syrup, so I had no idea at what point I had to "turn up the heat". When it did dissolve, and the mixture was boiling furiously, at no point did it turn into a "golden-brown colour", especially not after "about 5 minutes". So after about 8 minutes (when it started to smell like burnt sugar a lot) I decided to take the pan off the heat, dump in the baking powder (which did fizz nicely), stir it (the mixture did not "expand a lot"), and put it into my baking tray.

Oh, and a piece of the parchment got stuck as well!

 Might I add the fact that the stuff hardens as soon as you take it of the heat, and that our entire sink was covered in rock solid lumps of caramel that did not want to begone, and that I had a sinking feeling that I had just wrecked our most expensive pan? Needless to say, my plan of taking pictures during the baking process kind of got lost between frantically reading the recipe, trying not to stir the mixture, and smelling burnt black sugar that would be for ever coating the pan.

Does this look like honeycomb to you?

Now it really looks nothing like any other honeycomb I have ever seen. It is much darker, almost reddish brown, and there are some lumps of baking powder floating around in it. As for the taste, well, I would love to tell you that it tastes wonderful and divine, but truly, it tastes  like fatty burned caramel. Now I do not like caramel, so I might wait for a second opinion of one who will be home shortly, but I think we will write this off as a Baking Failure.