42 motherearthliving.com
Substituting Honey for Sugar
Honey is a natural food, not a standardized,
“purified” product. Accordingly, there’s some
variation in its sugar content and in the
proportions of the sugars present. Tupelo honey,
for instance, has more levulose and less dextrose
than other types, and can be identified by
chemical examination for those substances. In
addition, honey’s flavor varies depending upon
a number of factors, such as weather and what
flowers the bees have visited.
These “problems” of flavor and lack of stan-
dardization make honey less predictable than
sugar, and they probably cause most of the dif-
ficulties people experience when they look for the
ratio to use in substituting one for the other.
Well, I haven’t found the ratio either. There’s
no one proportion that will always “work,” that
will always produce exactly the same effect.
This lack of an exact, reliable equivalent hasn’t
bothered me much, though, because I consider
cooking more of an art than a science, and the
variability of honey is part of what makes each
batch an individual achievement.
I have found, however, that light honey is
easier to substitute than dark, because it’s more
predictable in flavor and less likely to overwhelm
other tastes. On the other hand, the dark varieties
have a robust quality that’s often a welcome
change. I’m told that the bees’ output is “safer,”
taste wise, to use if it’s aged at least a year, but I
can’t speak from experience.
At any rate, the sugar in any given recipe can
generally be replaced with an equal weight of
light honey — a rule that works out to about two-
thirds of a cup of liquid sweetening to one cup
of dry. And, of course, you must remember to
deduct about three tablespoons of other liquid for
each cup of honey you use.✽ Honey Syrup ✽
This recipe is easy to make, and the taste of honey naturally
sweetens cold beverages, such as iced tea.
Using honey to flavor cold beverages caused a minor
problem for us, as the golden liquid, when introduced into a
chilled drink, immediately stiffens. We found that we could over-
come this difficulty by mixing 1 part of room-temperature or
warm water with 3 parts of sweetener. Now a bottle of “honey
syrup” appears on our table for use with cold drinks, or in place
of other syrups for pancakes, ice cream, etc. One drawback is
that our mixture doesn’t keep well and will start to ferment in
about a week if unrefrigerated. Which, of course, leads to making
homemade Honey Wine (see Page 43).
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