Honey

Time: 1 hr 40 mins

Servings: 12 Slices

Ingredients

* 250 g honey

* 225 g unsalted butter

* 100 g dark muscovado sugar

* 3 large eggs, beaten

* 300 g self-raising flour

Method

1. Preheat the oven to fan 140C/ conventional 160C/gas 3. Butter and line a 20cm round loose bottomed cake tin.

2. Cut the butter into pieces and drop into a medium pan with the honey and sugar. Melt slowly over a low heat. When the mixture looks quite liquid, increase the heat under the pan and boil for about one minute. Leave to cool for 15-20 minutes to prevent the eggs cooking when they are mixed in.

3. Beat the eggs into the melted honey mixture using a wooden spoon.

4. Sift the flour into a large bowl and pour in the egg and honey mixture, beating until you have a smooth, quite runny batter.

5. Pour the mixture into the tin and bake for 55 minutes-1 hour until the cake is well-risen, golden brown and springs back when pressed. A skewer pushed into the centre of the cake should come out clean. Depending on your oven it might take another 10 minutes.

6. Turn the cake out on a wire rack. Warm 2 tbsp honey in a small pan and brush over the top of the cake to give a sticky glaze, then leave to cool. Keeps for 4-5 days wrapped, in an airtight tin.

Raw honey contains high levels of protein from the pollen grains present with small amounts of the same resins found in propolis, a complex mixture of anti-bacterial, anti-viral, and anti-fungal resins and other substances that honeybees use to seal the hive and make it safe from bacteria and other micro-organisms. When raw honey is extensively processed and heated, the benefits of these phytonutrients are largely eliminated.

The resins found in propolis only represent a small part of the phytonutrients found in propolis and honey. Other phytonutrients found both in honey and propolis are thought to posssess cancer-preventing and anti-tumour properties. Darker honeys, contain a greater amount of antioxidants than other honeys, and raw, unprocessed honey contains the widest variety of health-supportive substances.  

Different varieties of honey possess a large amount of friendly bacteria which may explain many of the “mysterious therapeutic properties of honey.

You can always tell natural honey as it crystallises unlike most supermarket honey. Natural honey is made up of crystals of sugar, both glucose and fructose as well as pollen grains. It's the glucose that crystallizes, so some types of honey are more resistant to crystallization because they have low glucose.

 Different flowers produce small (oil seed Rape) to very large (bramble) crystals. When the crystals start to form if they have something to cling to (pollen grains) then the process is quicker. The smaller the crystal the quicker it sets.

 Supermarket honey due to pasteurisation and processing has almost no pollen and lacks beneficial vitamins and enzymes that natural honey has. Supermarkets ultra-filter honey in a high-tech procedure where honey is heated, sometimes watered down and then forced at high pressure through extremely small filters to remove pollen. It is blast heated to 70 degrees killing the enzymes, propolis and the good anti-bacterial properties leaving just a sweet liquid. They do this because by the time it gets to the shelf sometimes months or even years have gone by since it was extracted from the hive, and the consumer wants to see runny honey in the jar not set.

Crystallization is totally normal and natural. If you don’t like the texture of crystallized honey it is quite simple to soften honey by adding heat. Don’t use a microwave as this is likely to destroy the beneficial enzymes by overheating them. It is best to liquify honey in a water bath. Fill a saucepan with water and gently heat to about 40C then turn off the heat. Put the glass jar of honey in the warm water and wait. Stirring the honey will speed up the process. Reheat the water as necessary taking care to keep the temperature below 40C.