What is honey?
Flowers secrete a liquid called nectar. Honey bees collect this nectar and bring it back to their hive where in a complex process they turn it into what we call honey. I think it is important to note and quite interesting that a single honey bee will produce only 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey it its lifetime. The bees in the hive will have to fly over 55,000 miles and visit over 2 million flowers to produce one pound of honey. The accumulated work of approximately 768 bees.
Honey is 80% sugar and 20% water compared to the nectar it started out as was 80% water and 20% sugar. Bees produce this sweet concoction for food. A single hive can produce up to 400 pounds of honey, luckily this is more than the hive needs to survive so we can remove some from the hive and consume it ourselves.
Using Honey
Honey is so much more then just a sweet topping to drizzle over peanut butter sandwich. You can use it sweeten anything. Honey flavor varies from batch to batch depending on what type of flower the bees are harvesting. Generally, the lighter the honey, the milder its flavor.
When cooking or using honey in a recipe you it's good to remember that unlike sugar honey adds a flavor to you food, so remember this when choosing what honey to use. Honey also absorbs moisture, which enables baked goods to stay fresher longer. Being a liquid there are a few techniques which are helpful to use when using honey vs sugar.
* substitute one cup honey for 1 cup sugar , but reduce the amount of liquid in the recipe by 1/4 cup.
* If you find honey to be too sweet reduce the amount. Use 3/4 cup honey to 1 cup sugar and reduce liquid by 3 tablespoons.
* When using honey instead of sugar in a recipe, bake the food longer and at a lower temp. 25 degrees lower than the original recipe calls for.
*Liquid honey works best in most recipes but crystallized honey can be used cup for cup for liquid honey. But crystallized honey tends to make baked goods denser.
*Honey is acidic. Add 1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda per cup of honey used to receive for baked goods. (Except yeast breads, because the leavening thrives in a slightly acidic environment. )
Since I've have a supply of honey coming from my back yard I've been using honey more often in cooking and as a sweetener. Over the next little while I will share recipes here that I've been trying honey in. Feel free to try them yourself and don't be afraid to comment on you thoughts and results.
