Move over salted caramel! How 'swicy' hot honey is the new flavour in town with booming sales and a huge TikTok fanbase

Salted Caramel, Gingerbread and Pumpkin Spice are just some of the staple tastes of Autumn, featured in coffee, cakes and a range of other sweet treats.

But there is a new flavour taking the UK food industry by storm — hot 'swicy' honey — and its certainly got a kick to it.

What started as a New York pizza topping, this chili-infused honey has amassed a TikTok following of over 912million with the #hothoney hashtag.

Not only that, but in the last month Hilltop Honey has seen a boom in sales of hot honey, increasing by 1,049 per cent compared to the same period last year.

This is partly because the product has started to be sold in Tesco , but Waitrose has reported that sales of its hot honey chicken bites has increased by 148per cent in the last week compared to the previous one.

Meanwhile, supermarkets will start putting their Christmas-themed food out onto the shelves in the coming weeks.

On the way at ASDA, will be a pigs in blankets wreath with camembert and hot honey drizzle.

At Tesco, there is a 'nduja and pork wellington with hot honey drizzle, as well as feta and celeriac snapakopita with hot honey.

Marks and Spencer has a hot honey brie brûlée, as well as hot honey popcorn, hot honey pigs in blanket crisps and hot honey halloumi in blankets.

Celebrity Chef Tom Kerridge said he was not surprised by the booming popularity of the flavour.

He told The Times: 'It goes really well with cheese. If you think of it as a spicy chutney, it makes sense'.

For him, he said, adding chili to honey works in the same was as adding salt to caramel.

'It enhances, it elevates the flavour', he added.

Kathryn Turner, the director of product development at M&S, told The Times that the hot honey flavour is here to stay and that sweet and spicy was 'so on trend'.

'In my view its gaining as much traction as salted caramel did.

'Next week we're set to launch a hot honey BBQ whole chicken that customers can roast at home, and by Christmas we will have ten unique hot-honey-themed products across the M&S Foodhall'.

TikTok users have been sharing their best recipes using the essential ingredient, ranging from hot honey cheese on toast to hot honey fried chicken, ice cream drizzled in hot honey and hot honey fruit pastries.

It is clear that unlike salted caramel, hot honey can be used for both main meals and desserts.

JD's Hot Honey was one of the first companies in the UK to sell a range of products featuring the flavour.

The company started in lockdown in 2021 when Jade Dawson and her husband James, started experimenting with homemade Neapolitan pizza toppings.