Crunchy Part of a Cadbury's Crunchie Bar

Mirj's Note:

Cadbury's Crunchie Bars are one of my favorite candy bars. They are also my dentist's favorite candy bar, because if I eat enough of these I keep him in business. This is a Nigella Lawson recipe, from her book How to Be a Domestic Goddess. She calls it cinder toffee, but for me it will always be the crunchy part of the Crunchy Bar.

• Total Time: 10 mins
• Prep Time: 5 mins
• Cook Time: 5 mins

Ingredients:

Servings: 16

• ¾ cup sugar
• 4 tablespoons light corn syrup
• 1 tablespoon baking soda

Directions:

1. Grease an 8 inch square pan with butter.
2. Off the heat (that means on the counter), mix the sugar and the syrup in a heavy-bottomed saucepan (use a pretty big saucepan, you'll thank me later).
3. Now put the pan over a medium to low heat and simmer for 3-4 minutes (Nigella bases this on using an 8-inch diameter saucepan).
4. The mixture is ready to come off the heat when it's a thick, bubbling bunch of gook, the color of light sand and no darker -- don't let it get any darker than that, or you'll end up with burnt and smelly sugar goop!
5. Take the stuff off the heat and quickly whisk in the baking soda.
6. Watch the caramel foam up like something out of a sci-fi film (this is the part where you thank me for telling you to use a large pot).
7. Pour the foamy stuff into the pan and leave it to set.
8. This will take several hours.
9. Be patient.
10. You can try and cut it into squares, but it will be a fruitless task.
11. Best bet is to just bash it into a bunch of different shaped pieces.
12. This is good frustration therapy.
13. You can dip the pieces into melted chocolate to make your own Cadbury's Crunchy bars, or you could fold splinters of this into either homemade or bought vanilla icecream for honeycomb ice cream.

Reviews

[rsarahl]

What GREAT fun! Mirj, you aren't kidding about the sci-fi aspect of this treat! I thought my pot was going to foam over. Truth be told, I had to make this twice because I let the first batch go a little too long... color is so subjective, you know?! One cook's "rusty caramel" is another's "jurassic amber" is another's "golden honey". My advice to others is to let the sugar syrup color only very lightly -- I would call the color "golden honey"-- lest you end up with a really neat looking but very burnt tasting candy! By letting the syrup color to a light golden hue, I ended up with a batch of wonderful crunchy toffee that is so close to the Cadbury Crunchy "crunchy" bits that we were well pleased! It only took our candy about 30 minutes to "set" hard enough to crack into pieces. Thanks for passing this one on; it's a really fun treat.

[Jenn]

Very cool, my favorite chocolate bar. I tried this recipe and it turned out great. It took a little longer than 3-4 minutes to turn color for me, but it didn't take that long to get hard so I broke it up and drizzled chocolate over the all the pieces. yum Clean up was the hardest part. The kids thought it was really neat. Thanks for the great recipe

[Chef #345992]

Excellent!! This tastes exactly like the "sponge candy" I used to buy! I can't quit eating it, it's addicting!