# Cooking honey down.



## Tom Chaudoir (Nov 20, 2005)

Hi,

Can I use a candy thermometer with honey and get the same results as with sugar? Will it ruin the honey? I don't want to take it to hard ball or anything. Just over "syrup" and short of "fudge". Nowhere near "soft ball".

Thanks,


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## Jim Fischer (Jan 5, 2001)

> Can I use a candy thermometer with honey and 
> get the same results as with sugar? 

No, not at all. You would get any detectable
crystallization or "thickening", just the
opposite. Heating crystallized honey is how
one "re-liquefies" it, which makes for a 
*thinner* honey.

> Will it ruin the honey? 

Often, yes. Unless you have "flash heating"
gear, which nearly no one can afford, the honey 
will quickly darken, the HMF level will go 
through the roof, and it will quickly "carmelize" 
at much lower temperatures than sugar would, 
tasting "dark" and "yucky".

> I don't want to take it to hard ball or 
> anything. Just over "syrup" and short of 
> "fudge". Nowhere near "soft ball".

The thickening that one gets with sugar as a
result of boiling off the water in the sugar
syrup one has mixed means that, if you were
using sugar, starting with classic "simple
syrup" you'd get:

215 - 235 F = "Thread Stage", for syrups
and icings (80% sugar)

220 - 222 F = "Pear Stage", for jelly and candy

235 - 240 F = "Soft Ball Stage", for fondant
and cream-filling for chocolates
(85% sugar)

...and so on, up to "Hard Crack Stage", which
would be something around 99% sugar, 1% water.

You can do this because you mixed sugar into
water, dissolving it, and then boiled off 
some large fraction of the water, creating a 
super-saturated solution that forms a "solid" 
at the drop of a hat. The more water you
boil off, the more hard/solid a "solid" you 
get when it cools. The sucrose re-crystalizes
into nice regular structures that form goo,
paste, gum, and solids.

Now, honey starts out at more than 80% sugar,
as anything over 19% water content is "unripe
honey". Most honey is somewhere between
15% and 18% water (85% to 82% sugar), and
somewhere between 1% and 3% of the total 
sugar is sucrose, so heating it up is not 
going to thicken it at all, as the sucrose
will not find other molecules of sucrose
to form crystals with very often, due to
all the glucose and fructose in the way.

Sugar is pure (or nearly pure) sucrose (the
disaccharide), while honey has only a minor
amount of sucrose in most cases, and is
already 90% to 95% "hydrolyzed" into glucose 
and fructose.

The most common way to AVOID crystallization of 
sucrose in candy (when making caramels or taffy)
is to add fructose and glucose, and prevent the
(physically large) crystals of sucrose from
forming due to the all the little molecules of 
fructose and glucose hanging around "in the way". 
Another way to do this is to add lemon juice or 
cream of tartar to break up the sucrose ("invert" 
it) into fructose and glucose, which has the
same end result as adding fructose and/or glucose.

If you want honey to crystallize, you'd have
to investigate making "creamed honey", where
you "seed" the mixture with crystals of 
a prior batch of creamed honey and store
it at cool temperatures to prompt it to form 
crystals and "thicken up".

...and yes, I do make candy and confections,
so I sometimes had a candy thermometer in one
hand and a refractometer in the other.

Liquid honey filled chocolates anyone? 
Chocolate-coated creamed honey truffles?

You can't sell honey unless you know <a href="http://bee-quick.com/reprints/sugar.pdf" target="_blank">
the competiton!</a>


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## Chef Isaac (Jul 26, 2004)

Jim: do you make the liquid honey filled chocolates? 

Do you temper the chocolate?


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## Tom Chaudoir (Nov 20, 2005)

Wow. Thanks for the detailed explanation.

I don't want creamed honey, just a slightly higher viscosity. Just short of jelly is supposed. Sorry, I don't have the language for this.


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## Jim Fischer (Jan 5, 2001)

> I don't want creamed honey, just a slightly 
> higher viscosity. Just short of jelly is supposed.

Wow, that would be tough to do. All I can
imagine is adding a solid to the honey to
allow it to "jell up", but I have no idea
what one would use
...pectin? 
...unflavored gelatin? 
...make an aero-gel?

Please report any discoveries, as this is
an interesting idea, not that I have any
idea what I would do with "jelled honey".

> Jim: do you make the liquid honey filled 
> chocolates?

Yes, by hand, no less.

> Do you temper the chocolate?

Yes, my chocolate keeps its temper better
than I ever could, and I also temper by
hand. Very old-school, but a good way
to spend an afternoon, now that the 
afternoons are cooler and drier, and
one can actually mess around with chocolate
and sugar without making blobs of useless goo.


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## buz (Dec 8, 2005)

Don't know if this is any like you ment..what would happen if you added bakers honey to a batch of liquid honey? assuming you could mix it well--that seems to be a less liquid concoction. 
Jim I didn't see mention of the dry form honey in you sugar vs. honey expose. Would Tom get his thicker honey by this method?


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## GaSteve (Apr 28, 2004)

Here's a recipe for honey jelly I found through Google. Personally, I'd leave out the paraffin and use regular canning lids.

http://www.recipesource.com/side-dishes/jams/01/rec0148.html

This would be quite different than a really viscous honey which wouldn't flow or spread very well.


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## Dick Allen (Sep 4, 2004)

Leaving out the apple juice and using only honey, water, and pectin makes it even better.

http://www.beesource.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=14;t=000334#000002


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