Törökméz
Hungarian treat - Törökméz
Recently I had cheesecake with a sprinkling of sponge toffee topping, a fun play on the classic dessert Crème Brûlée, and it reminded me of Törökméz. Translated from Hungarian as “Turkish honey”, Törökméz is a spongy, fragile candy that quickly shatters as it hits your teeth, and then melts in your mouth when it lands on your tongue a second later.
The super sweet treat is usually homemade and as I ate the cheesecake I suddenly remembered making this Turkish honey as a child; Pauline called it “capalov”. The main ingredients are sugar and honey, and sometimes walnuts too, with a secret ingredient that causes it to bubble it up like a honeycomb. Sponge toffee is similar, made with brown sugar and corn syrup.
When you can’t make it yourself, the next best thing is to buy it as a candy bar – the Crunchie bar in Canada and in the UK, or the Violet Crumble in Australia.
Törökméz Ingredients
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 tbsp honey
- 1.5 tsp baking soda
- 1/3 cup crushed walnuts, optional
Steps
- Prepare a lightly greased piece of wax paper on a cookie sheet
- On the stove, melt the sugar and honey together and continue to stir until it is golden brown, about 10 minutes
- Add the walnuts in, if you are using them
- Toss in the baking soda, and it will start to fizz
- Immediately pour the carmelized sugar onto the wax paper and allow it to cool, about an hour
- Break into pieces
Pauline's Cookbook 
In translation from Hungarian it means Turkish honey, in Pivnice they called it capalov
Hi Jaro, and what does capalov mean?! Do Slovaks there make it too? Have you ever made it? Tonya
Our grandmother would buy us capalov (no idea what the name means) at montly fairs in Erdevik. I loved it, although it was always amazingly sticky and chewy, almost impossible to eat without getting one’s face totally mucky! I loved the taste, though. When I arrived in England, I was delighted to discover cinder toffee (nowadays only sold in traditional sweet shops)-same taste but crumbly, instead of sticky texture. And I, too, have reached for Crunchie bar many a time. 🙂
I have never known anybody making their own, it was a kind of treat one would only buy at fairs. But I am sure there are some mums who did make it at home. I must try it now I have an accurate recipe. 😉
Capalov was something that was bought at the local village fairs (jarmok) in Slovak towns. Kids would always come home with it. In Australia we call it ‘honeycomb’ and I have made it a number of times. We also have ‘Crunchie’ in Australia and ‘Violet Crumble’, the Crunchie is lighter in texture, more airated and the Violet Crumble is denser and much harder. I would describe the capalov as being something inbetween the Crunchie and the Violet Crumble. It brings back memories when I was in Pivnica in 1977 and visited the ‘jarmok’ that came to Pivnica, I came home home with capalov, hid it, only to find the following day that someone had stollen it and ate it. I was not a happy 8 year old. Thanks for sharing about capalov.