Cooking with Honey

Honey adds more body and flavour to baking but there’s more to it than just swapping honey for sugar in a recipe. There are a few tricks to be aware of and then you can convert most of your favourite recipes away from sugar to honey. Sugar has long been a cheap sweetener and even the oldest recipes prefer it to honey. This may be because the printing press was invented about the same time that we had access to cheaper sugar. Honey has traditionally been used to preserve fruits and to make mead; it was expensive to everyone except the monasteries, and peasants who had their own skep with a colony of bees. Honey can be used to add sweetness, taste and umami (or body) to savoury dishes; equally it matches perfectly with most cheeses and fruits, especially berries. Honey’s acidity is masked by its intense sweetness, honey is about as acidic as tomatoes and orange juice at about 3.9pH. This helps to bridge the gap between sweet and savoury. Maureen Conquer wrote a lovely cookbook with recipes from her sadly missed Waimauku Honey Centre and Cafe- Bees Online and within there are some top tips that she shares for baking with honey.

  • Honey is twice as sweet as sugar; when substituting honey for sugar in a recipe, use half
  • Honey is heavier than sugar; one cup of sugar weighs 250g and one cup of honey weighs 350g
  • To counter the acidity in honey, add 1/2t baking soda (bicarbonate of soda) per cup of honey
  • To measure honey, it is easiest to warm the spoon. Alternatively spray or coat spoon or measuring jug with oil. Warming the honey helps it to pour more freely.
  • When baking, reduce the temperature by about 15°c. The higher fructose content caramelises at a lower temperature than sugar
  • When using honey as a substitute for sugar in cake recipes, use the same weight of honey as sugar, but reduce the liquid by a quarter
  • Honey is hygroscopic, it attracts moisture, so cakes will stay fresher, and biscuits may go soft and be more chewy
  • As a rule of thumb, darker honey tends to have a stronger flavour

I use honey instead of sugar in creme brulee, custard, fruit compote; sticky BBQ sauce, fruit smoothies and my winter fruit salad (dried fruits and tinned pears simmered in a honey syrup infused with cinnamon, bay leaf, vanilla and cardamon). I use honey instead of maple syrup (pancakes & bacon), golden syrup (flapjacks, gingerbread) and treacle (sticky toffee pudding).

One of my favourite recipes is based on Pecan Pie with walnuts instead of pecans and honey instead of maple syrup, exactly the same gooey, slightly chewy texture but with a more familiar comforting flavour.

Honey Walnut Tart

Ingredients

3             eggs, beaten                   175g              shelled walnut halves

1T          treacle                              25g butter

300g      honey                              125g              soft brown sugar

1/4t        vanilla extract/essence

One large, sweet pastry case, blind baked

Pre heat oven to 160°c

Method

Combine treacle, butter, honey and soft brown sugar into a saucepan; and gently heat until the sugar and butter has dissolved.

Stir in eggs and vanilla essence; pass through a sieve.

Put walnuts into pastry case and then pour over honey mixture.

Put into oven and cook for approximately 30-40mins or until the centre is barely set. Leave to cool. Its best eaten a couple of days later when the walnuts have softened.

Serve slightly warmed with whipped cream, crème fraiche or custard.

My very favourite recipe, albeit not baking, is for a refreshing pre-dinner drink after tending my hives.

Espresso Martini

This recipe is an improvement on the standard recipe as it uses my manuka honey instead of Kahlua. It has a distinctly kiwi feel to it.  Serves two

200ml strong coffee (in a single serve plunger, use double the amount of ground coffee and only ¾ water)

100ml Vodka, good quality, 1 T Manuka honey (or strong flavoured honey) Ice Cubes

Put fresh hot coffee and honey into a cocktail shaker and stir until dissolved. Put shaker into a jug of cold water for a few minutes to cool coffee. Add vodka and ice cubes, put lid on and shake vigorously for a minute.

Strain into cocktail glasses. Serve immediately. Instead of a cocktail shaker you can use a drink bottle or blender.

Of course, local honey tasted so much better than all the rest.

Ken Brown

President Auckland Beekeepers Club

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