What are You Baking the Week of August 13, 2017?

[BakerAunt]

Italian Cook--Italian-style flour is one of the flours I do not have in my vast flour collection. I'll be interested in hearing about your cracker baking session.

[cwcdesign]

On Friday, I made my continuing adaptation of the Barefoot Contessa's Honey Vanilla Poundcake - I'm getting closer. I bought some LorAnn vanilla bean paste at Michael's with a 40% coupon - it really amped up the vanilla flavor. I added extra honey, but forgot to reduce the sugar - it wasn't as sweet as I thought it would be but it was a little denser. And I used KAF's vanilla glaze, too. It was not as dry as it had been and it had much better flavor. Now I just need to work on the densness

Does anyone know how much you should reduce sugar if you add an extra tablespoon of honey? KAF just did a blog on substitutions, but it was about using one sweetener or another.

[Mike Nolan]

Honey is a combination of several sugars, mostly fructose and glucose, but not in the same ratio as table sugar (sucrose.) The more glucose there is in honey, the more it is prone to crystallize.

Fructose has a sweetness index a bit higher than sucrose, glucose is a bit lower than sucrose, so most sources will say that pound for pound sugar and honey have the same amount of sweetness. A honey that is high in fructose will taste just a bit sweeter, though.

Honey is denser than sucrose, which is why it has slightly more calories by dry measure, 64 calories/tablespoon compared to 48 calories/tablespoon for sugar. But by weight, honey is not quite as caloric, 304 calories per 100 grams, as compared to 387 for sucrose. (However, some sources report the caloric numbers differently, and there's an inconsistency in them that I haven't reconciled, that's a project for another day and thread.)

Honey is also about 17% water, which may or may not impact a recipe.

For a small amount like a tablespoon of honey, I'd just take out a tablespoon of sugar, I don't know that I'd bother adjusting the amount of water.

[BakerAunt]

When I substitute honey for sugar in my yeast breads, I do it 1:1. However, I've not had occasion to substitute for a lot of honey. Usually it is for 1 or 2 Tablespoons.

[skeptic7]

Two weeks ago it a cold spell I did a double batch of blueberry scones, and a lemon meringue pie. I reread the directions that BakerAunt gave for the buttermilk pie crust and it turned out much batter. The blueberry scones were well received. I used the lemon meringue pie recipe from KA 200th Anniversery cookbook, it used boiling water and was faster than the last recipe but not as lemony.

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