Welcome to Kitchen Queries, where the nigella.com team will answer your cooking or food related questions.  We’d love you to submit some of your recipe problems, dilemmas or queries for us to get our teeth into!

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• Golden Syrup Substitute

  Hi, I live in India and cannot find golden syrup anywhere. I would love to try the Hokey Pokey recipe by Nigella so could please suggest any substitute for it?

  Posted by appy23. Answered on 13th Jul 2012 at 12.00

  From the nigella team:

  Golden syrup is a syrup made from cane sugar. It is used in the Hokey Pokey recipe to help reduce the risk of the boiling sugar mixture from crystallizing, which would give the hokey pokey a slightly crumbly texture. You should also not stir the sugar mixture while it is boiling as this can cause crystallization - just swirl the pan gently once or twice if it is darkening too quickly at the edges of the pan.

  If you can't find golden syrup then you could use honey (the clear, runny type), though the flavour of the honey will come through slightly in the finished Hokey Pokey. Otherwise you could use corn syrup or glucose syrup (you can get this from cake decorating suppliers and somethimes in pharmacies). You could also try using jaggery syrup, though again the flavour of the jaggery may come through in the Hokey Pokey.

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