The first thing you see in the viral “Honeycomb Candy” video on TikTok is a piece of what looks like a sweet piece of bread or toffee, and then a woman describing what it is. That woman is the proprietor of @cookingwithlynja, and the 35-second video has gone crazy viral, garnering almost 3 million views.
So why is it so popular? Well, first of all who doesn’t love candy? Add honeycomb to the mix and you’ve really got something special on your hands. It also doesn’t hurt that the video is shot crisply and everything is recorded beautifully ASMR-style.
Check out the video below:
So who is she? According to a profile by Forbes, Lynja’s real name is Lynn Yamada Davis and she’s 66 years old. She graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and then attended Columbia University. She went viral after her son, who’s a videographer, uploaded her making a breakfast sandwich.
Things have been good for Davis and they’ll only get bigger as she recently inked deals with McDonald’s, Chobani, and Amazon.
Another reason for the video’s popularity is that it almost looks like some kind of unknown science experiment. We see Davis put a mixture of water, sugar and honey in a clear pot and put it on a flame until it starts to boil.
She then adds another ingredient and the mixture starts to grow and expand, to Davis’ delight. It’s mixed until it has a consistency of peanut butter and whip cream at the same time. Floppy and airy. After that, she puts it in a freezer until it’s frozen solid.
When she takes it out, it looks like honeycomb but you have to chip it off from the now frozen mixture. Davis tries a knife but that doesn’t really work so she tries a few other methods to get the concrete-like block to chip away into edible pieces.
While Davis bills herself as “Just a regular mom with killer cooking skills” she’s become a celebrity recently due to the quality of her videos, warm personality, cooking skills, and of course a big following.
Recently, she even did a video with superstar music producer Benny Blanco. They deep-fried his gift from Ed Sheeran, which just happened to be a Rolex watch worth somewhere around $35,000.
That video has more than 2 million views. Not quite as viral as the honeycomb recipe but very popular nonetheless.
I’m sure we’ll continue to see more popular videos from Davis in the future.