Hi Bold Bakers, when I launched my cookbook this year I got a lot of requests from you
asking how to make a golden syrup.
I use this a lot in my book and it’s a key ingredient in Irish baking.
It’s very similar to a corn syrup, it’s thick, it’s amber in color it’s really
caramely.
We don’t have corn syrup in Ireland so we use Golden Syrup instead.
It’s great for recipes like cookies and it’s perfect in my homemade honeycomb.
I’m gonna show you how you can make a fantastic substitute at home with just three ingredients.
So into my saucepan I’m gonna add my small amount of sugar and some water.
And then over a medium-low heat, I’m just gonna let this sugar dissolve.
Now you don’t want it to simmer at this point you want it to dissolve before it simmers.
And just a heads up, I’m using a heavy bottom sauce pan because we’re technically making
a caramel and you want a really heavy bottom saucepan to do that.
So I’m just swirling my pot here and I can see that my sugar is dissolved, so we can
now at this point bring it up to a simmer so I’m gonna turn it up a tiny bit, what
we’re going for is a rich amber color so this will take a few minutes to form.
So here I have the color caramel that I want, it’s not smoking, it’s nice and brown,
it’s a nice rich color.
This took around 8 minutes or so, try and get the same color I did.
And when you get to this stage add in your large amount of sugar, our boiling water.
Make sure it’s water that just came off the boil, and then our acid which is lemon
juice.
We’re gonna add that in there.
Lemon juice is really important, it stops it from crystalizing you don’t want to leave
that out.
Then go in with a whisk and whisk in your sugar.
Now I do want you to know that it will lump at this stage, don’t worry you didn’t
do anything wrong, we’re just gonna keep whisking and those lumps of sugar are gonna
work themselves out.
They won’t be there in the end so don’t worry.
So just continue whisking until you’ve got the lumps out of there.
They’re pretty much gone now.
And now what I want to do is still over a medium low heat kind of a nice controlled
simmer, we’re gonna let this simmer for around 17-20 minutes or so, but I’m gonna
show you what color and what stage you want it at before you turn it off.
So now we’re a few minutes in to the simmering process and I just want to show you something.
If I put in my spatula and just drip off the golden syrup, you can see that it’s just
dripping off and not hanging around that means that it’s not ready yet it’s not near
done, we’re gonna let it continue simmering and come back and show you as it thickens.
Ok we’re a few more minutes in and as you can see when you put your spatula in, the
sugar is starting to thicken and it’s slowly dripping off my spatula.
Not as slow as I want it to, but it’s starting to slow down so we’re gonna keep on going.
So it’s been simmering away for around 18-20 minutes, and as you can see when I put my
spatula in now, the caramel has thickened and it’s dripping even slower off my spatula.
Now you might need a little bit more time you might need a little bit less, that all
depends I just want you to keep an eye on the color and texture that we’re looking
for.
And also if you’re thinking, “Gemma, this doesn’t look like golden syrup, it’s really
runny”, it is.
But thing about it is when you cool golden syrup it thickens up a lot so you do want
it at this stage so when it firms up it’ll be nice and syrupy just like Golden.
Syrup.
So I’m gonna turn off the heat and move it to a colder part of the stove and let it
cool off in there.
So I gave my golden syrup around an hour or so, maybe longer, and as you can see it’s
thickened and cooled down completely so this is perfect, so right now we’re gonna get
it into a nice air-tight jar.
So the good news is your golden syrup will last for ages in an airtight container in
the cupboard, so you’re probably looking at around 8 weeks minimum but you’ll probably
last a lot longer.
Golden syrup is a fantastic ingredient to bake with so don’t forget it in my cookies,
my cakes and my homemade honey comb.
I’ll see you back here really soon for more Bigger Bolder Baking.