What Can Honey Do For Me?

Posted on May 9, 2007 in Nutrition by byronb

If you are craving something sweet, but are trying to eat healthy and therefore to avoid the negative health effects which come from refined sugar, an excellent option that you may consider is honey. One of the best benefits of honey is the fact that is metabolizes significantly more slowly than sugar, which makes it much less likely for you to experience a “sugar high” following a snack involving honey. Most people do not attempt cooking using honey, because they have never learned how and it can be a little intimidating to try. Once you obtain a basic understanding regarding using honey as a sweetener, it actually becomes quite easy to do. Honey makes a stellar sugar substitute, because it can add all of the sweetness that you need for your baked goods without adding any negative health effects. Honey has no negative effect on your health, making it a great deal healthier for you than what refined sugars can offer.

The first challenge that you may face while attempting to cook using honey, is the fact that honey burns much more easily than normal sugar will. All that it takes to eliminate this problem is to change your recipes to cook at a lower temperature in order to keep the honey from burning. Your baked goods will still cook the same, and the honey will keep from being burned in the process.

The second challenge that you may face while attempting to cook with honey is that replacing sugar with honey may ruin a few of your recipes if you do not plan an allowance for the liquid which is added by the honey substitution.

Honey is a great sugar substitute when it comes to pies, since they are already fairly liquid-like in nature, and if you end up with a slightly runny pie you can always add a little thickener to even it out. Many muffin recipes, breads involving yeast and quick breads can generally adjust themselves to the honey addition, though you may need to o some math to adjust your cake and cookie recipes if the addition of honey makes them runny.

Honey may cause a slight change in the flavor of your baking, but this is not usually an issue. You can buy honey with a milder flavor if you want to avoid having the honey change the taste of your baked goods. The best honey for this purpose is typically a pale clover honey; because the honey is typically sweeter and more mild depending on how pale the color is, although there are exceptions to this. If you still have a problem with the flavor, you may consider only substituting some of the recipe’s sugar with honey in order to tame the flavor while still making the recipe a healthier one. Other sweeteners worth trying include apple juice concentrate, stevia, agave nectar or even a sugar substitute like splenda.