Cooking and baking with honey

You bought a jar from a farm and now it's sitting on the counter. Honey doesn't behave like sugar, so a straight swap gives you a flat, dark cake. Here is what to change instead.

Honey instead of sugar

Honey is sweeter than sugar and it's wet, so you can't tip it in one for one. Use less of it, then take a little liquid back out.

Three more changes

• Turn the oven down about 25°F, or 15°C. Honey browns much faster than sugar. Start checking early, because the edges go dark while the middle is still raw.

• Add 1/4 tsp baking soda per cup of honey. Honey is a bit sour, and the soda balances it so things rise properly. Skip this if the recipe already has something sour in it, like buttermilk, yogurt, sour cream, or lemon juice.

• Expect a softer result. Honey holds onto water, so cookies spread more and stay chewy, and cakes stay moist for days longer. That's lovely in a gingerbread and annoying in a cookie you wanted crisp.

Honey instead of corn syrup

This one is easier. In most recipes you can swap honey for corn syrup cup for cup and nothing else has to change. Both are thick and both stop sugar going grainy.

The difference is taste. Corn syrup is just sweet, and honey tastes like honey. In pecan pie, granola bars, barbecue sauce, or a glaze on carrots, that's an improvement. In something you wanted to taste of nothing but vanilla, it isn't.

Two warnings. Honey burns at a lower heat, so watch anything you're boiling. And don't use it for hard candy, brittle, or anything cooked to the hard crack stage. It scorches and turns bitter long before it gets there.

Getting it out of the cup

Oil the measuring cup or spoon first and the honey slides straight out, instead of leaving a third of itself behind. If the recipe has oil or melted butter in it, measure that first in the same cup and you get the coating for free. A cup rinsed in hot water works too.

Which honey for which job

Honey isn't one flavour. The colour is a decent hint: pale is mild, dark is strong.

• Pale and mild. Clover, alfalfa, canola. Good in tea, on toast, and in any baking where you don't want the honey shouting over everything else.

• Golden and fuller. Wildflower, goldenrod, basswood, sunflower. These taste of where they came from and change from farm to farm, even year to year. Nice drizzled on yogurt or cheese, where you can taste it on its own.

• Dark and strong. Buckwheat, and it's a big flavour, almost molasses. Put it in gingerbread, rye bread, barbecue sauce, or a marinade. Most people don't want it in their tea.

You can search the directory by honey type if you're after a particular one.

Gone hard and grainy? It's fine

Honey crystallises. It's not spoiled, it hasn't gone off, and it isn't a sign somebody sold you something fake. Quite the opposite. Raw honey does it sooner than the heated supermarket kind, and some honeys, like canola, set within weeks.

To make it runny again, stand the open jar in a bowl of warm tap water and stir now and then. Not boiling water, and not the microwave on full. Too much heat drives off the smell and taste you paid for, and once that's gone you can't get it back.

Or leave it. Set honey spreads on toast without running off the edges, which is arguably the better way to eat it anyway.

Storing it

Cupboard, lid on, away from the stove. Not the fridge, which only makes it set faster. Honey keeps more or less forever as long as it stays dry, so use a clean dry spoon every time. Water is the one thing that can make a jar ferment.