Cooking and baking with honey

Four differences that matter

What honey does that sugar cannot

• It keeps baked goods moist for longer. Honey is hygroscopic and holds water in the crumb, which is why honey cakes and gingerbread stay soft for days after a sugar-sweetened equivalent has dried out.
• It browns beautifully. The earlier browning is a problem in a long bake and an asset on a glaze, where you want colour fast without overcooking what is underneath.
• It adds flavour. Which is the point, and also the reason a delicate honey is wasted in anything cooked hard or long.
• It contributes acidity, which can tenderise in a marinade and interacts usefully with dairy.

Where substitution does not work

• Anything relying on creamed butter and sugar for aeration. Sugar crystals cutting into butter is what creates the air; a liquid sweetener cannot do it, and the sponge will be denser.
• Meringue and Italian meringue. Egg white foam structure depends on sucrose behaving in a particular way, and honey does not substitute cleanly.
• Anything needing a hard crack or a clean caramel. Honey's mixed sugars and water behave differently at high temperature and it burns before it reaches the same stages.
• Delicate biscuits where crispness comes from dryness. The added water and the hygroscopy will soften them within a day.

Glazes and marinades

This is where honey earns its place in savoury cooking, and the key is timing. Honey applied at the start of a roast will be black by the end. Applied in the last ten to fifteen minutes, it caramelises to a lacquer without burning.

• Balance it. Honey alone on meat is cloying; it needs acid (vinegar, citrus, mustard) and salt (soy, fish sauce, miso) opposite it.
• Match the weight. Buckwheat or chestnut honey stands up to soy, smoke and chilli. Acacia in a barbecue glaze is simply expensive sugar.
• In a marinade, the acidity does real work on connective tissue, but the sugar will still burn — wipe excess off before high-heat cooking and brush more on at the end.