THE HONEY TRIP

Enlarge Image Image Gallery

by: Margaret T. Hasse

Cooking with honey has added a lot of adventure to our kitchen experiences, which weren't too tame before. No, I'm not going to hit you with a long "honey is better for you" line (though I'm sure it is). My enthusiasm for this and all natural foods is more from the taste standpoint. Natural food deserves natural sweetening and cooking with honey is fun.

I've experimented quite a bit and learned quite a bit since we made the change from sugar last winter. First I read what The Joy of Cooking had to say, since The joy is usually a good place to start researching a food preparation problem. Then I asked friends. Then I started trying The Honey Trip began when Husband John visited our friendly neighborhood beekeeper to get supplies for my Christmas baking, and came back with a five pound tin plus a honeycomb (a gift). (Tip Number One: Whenever possible, buy direct from a nearby source. If you use honey for all or most of your sweetening you'll need a lot, and this way you'll be able to purchase in bulk and get the best possible price. You'll also be sure that the product meets your standards: unheated, bees fed no sugar or drugs, etc. And quite likely you'll get to know someone a beekeeper who can teach you things you didn't know about bees or honey or whatever.)

All the first recipes I prepared with honey tasted so good, and our beekeeper's prices were so reasonable (only a little more than white sugar per "sweetening unit"), that our use of his wares sort of snowballed and so did our education.

HONEY IS DIFFERENT

First of all, I learned to slow down because naturally sweetened baked goods brown faster (a difference I like). To keep my modified breads and muffins from over browning before they've cooked through, I bake them a little longer at a lower temperature. When I'm converting a new sugar recipe to honey for the first time I automatically knock 250E off the oven setting.

Of course, the same consideration applies to other cooking methods as well as to baking. All dishes made with honey seem to stick a little sooner or burn a little faster. I stir more often than I used to and am forever turning down the flame.

Another point to remember is that honey adds liquid to a recipe: about three tablespoons of extra fluid per cup of sweetening or one quarter cup per pound. Even when you allow for that fact, your baked goods will tend to be moister than those made with sugar and the longer, slower baking which prevents burning also helps keep the texture moist rather than wet.