# Honey in recipes



## nursebee (Sep 29, 2003)

My wife says your general ratio is about right. Honey is acidic and you might need to neutralize it with a bit of soda.


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## BubbaBob (Jan 18, 2005)

When baking with honey, replace sugar with honey by reducing the volume (not weight) by 20%. In other words, a recipe that calls for 2 cups of sugar only needs 1 3/5 cups of honey.

Also, remember that honey is around 18% water so you also need to reduce the amount of other liquid in the recipe or increase the amount of dry ingredients to compensate for the water content in the honey.

Lastly, while I don't consider this to be a negative, it is something to remember so you aren't disappointed with the results. Remember that while sugar tastes like sugar tastes like sugar, different honeys taste different and that will be reflected in the taste of the finished product. The same cake, with the same recipe using honey, will taste different when made with sourwood honey than it will with wildflower honey, and both will be different than if made with clover honey.

BubbaBob


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## Jim Fischer (Jan 5, 2001)

My wife owns and runs the "Flying Pig Bakery",
which supplies shops and restaurants with bread
and other baked goodies. The rule of thumb used
by most bakers (and the National Honey Board) is:

3/4 cup of honey = one cup of sugar.
Reduce liquids by one-half cup for
each cup of honey you add to the recipe.

To substitute honey for molasses,
use exactly the same amount. The resulting
flavor and color will be lighter.

To substitute honey for corn syrup, use exactly
the same amount, but consider reducing other
sweet ingredients, as a honey is sweeter than
consumer-packaged corn syrup.

The reason that honey is sweeter than sugar is
the fructose content in honey. If sucrose is
assigned a "sweetness value" of 1.0, glucose
would be about 0.6, and fructose would be 1.7.
As honey contains more fructose than glucose,
honey is sweeter.


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## BubbaBob (Jan 18, 2005)

Jim, I'm glad to know your wife is a baker because I've had a question I have not been able to answer for a while and I've been just guessing...

What if you cannot reduce the liquid in compensation because all of the liquid is integral to the recipe? Example, I make an applesauce/walnut cake that has as it's only moisture butter, eggs, and applesauce. How would I compensate for the water in honey if I substitute it for sugar since there is no flavorless liquid (water) to leave out?

BubbaBob


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## Jim Fischer (Jan 5, 2001)

> What if you cannot reduce the liquid in compensation...

But you can!!!
There's lots of water in applesauce.

Toss the applesauce into a fine-mesh
strainer (or a mesh bag), and let the water
drip out for a while. Measure the water
that has drained off, and throw out the amount
you are "replacing" with the honey, and pour
the remainder back into the applesauce.

You will not reduce "flavor" by draining
water out of the applesauce. The flavor
is in the apple chunks.

If you were in a hurry, you could "cook down"
the applesauce to reduce the water, but then
you would have the measure the applesauce
volume both before and after cooking down to
figure out the amount of water "cooked off",
and you might have to add some water back
to a "too-well cooked-down" applesauce.

Cooking down would silence any critics who
might persist in thinking that there was
some flavor lost in a draining approach.
You can tell them that only the water would
vaporize, "concentrating" the flavor. It is
a bit of a fairy tale, but kitchens are where
fairy tales tend to live, aren't they?


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## BubbaBob (Jan 18, 2005)

In this particular recipe there is 2C sugar, which translates to 1.6C honey, which is .32C water...I can't get a third of a cup of water out of the 1C applesauce that is in the cake...

BubbaBob


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