Many chefs and bakers have discovered the joys of cooking with honey. Orange blossom honey, with its unique and delicate taste, is a favorite honey flavor of many bakers (including Bob and Suzette’s eldest son, Chris!).

In addition to lending its flavor, raw honey can add some vitamins and minerals to your dish of choice, something that most sugars, having been highly processed, cannot do. Honey also makes your blood sugar rise at a much lower rate than sugar, which also causes your blood sugar to lower at a slower rate (how many of us have had a “sugar crash” after eating too many baked sweets?).

Tip: To make it easy for the honey to slide out of the measuring cup, oil or spray the measuring cup.

Cooking with Raw Honey

For sauces, marinades and salad dressings:
substitute pure honey for up to half the granulated sweetener in a recipe.

Tip: Honey will often taste sweeter than sugar, and you may find it too sweet for a one-to-one substitute in some recipes. Reduce the amount of honey by using 1/2 to 3/4 as much honey as the sugar called for in the recipe.

Baking with Raw Honey:

Honey absorbs moisture from the air, making the baked goods moister. The result is a softer baked good that does not stale as quickly. Who doesn’t love that?

Use orange blossom honey for up to half the granulated sweetener in a recipe.
For each 1 cup of honey:

• reduce any liquid by 1/4 cup
• add 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  (to help your baked goods rise)
• reduce oven temperature by 25 degrees Fahrenheit
  (to avoid overbrowning–honey burns easily)

While orange blossom honey does especially well as a sugar substitute when cooking and baking, you can also experiment with different flavors of honey. In general, the darker honeys like wildflower honey and tulip poplar honey have a stronger taste than lighter honeys, like orange blossom honey, tupelo honey, and sourwood honey.

Buy your favorite type of raw honey, or buy a variety of raw honeys from our main website, and have fun discovering your favorites!

If you have any other tips for baking or cooking with honey, share them in the comments below. We’d love to read about them!

-Cheryl

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When I was growing up, my mother used to make huge batches of granola for us. There was nothing better than eating freshly-baked granola, still warm from the oven. For the kids, it was as good as eating warm cookies. For my mother, it was a sneaky way to get us to eat all kinds of healthy things in one shot.

I can’t even remember the last time my mother made her granola. But the other day I walked into my parents’ kitchen to see bags of suspicious ingredients (”You already have oats. Why did you just buy more?”). Turns out that she was getting ready to make her world famous (or Binnie-family famous) granola!

There are many granola recipes that call for brown sugar or maple syrup, but my mother always used honey. After all, we did have a resident beekeeper (my dad) among us. Since I happened to be around, I thought it’d be a great idea to snap some pictures and share the recipe here on the Orange Blossom Honey blog.

Granola
Makes approximately 1 gallon

6 cups oats 2 cups bran 2 cups wheat germ 1 cup sunflower seeds 1/2 cup sesame seeds 1 cup chopped almonds 1 1/2 cup raisins

1 1/2 cup honey 2/3 cup oil 2 teaspoon vanilla 4 teaspoon cinnamon 1 teaspoon cloves 1 teaspoon ginger

Mix the ingredients from the first column, except the raisins, into a large bowl.
	Mix the ingredients from the second column together in a medium bowl.
Mix all of these ingredients together in the large bowl (still omitting the raisins). Stir well.
	Spread the contents onto a large pan . . .
. . . and bake at 300 degrees for one hour. Stir often.
	After baking, you can finally add the raisins! Continue to stir often while cooling. The granola will begin to clump together as it cools.
(Check out the honey in the background: it looks like we’ve got Wildflower Honey, Sourwood Honey and Tulip Poplar Honey on the counter, as well!)

The granola is great as a dry snack, but I always liked to eat mine like cold cereal: in a bowl, with milk.

However you prefer to eat your granola, enjoy!

The secret to the honey…

Since this website is about orange blossom honey, you might assume that we used orange blossom honey in the granola. Not this time around!

Orange blossom honey is great for many baking recipes, but my mother, as you already know if you’ve checked out our About page, prefers the honeys with strong flavors. Orange blossom honey is one of our milder types of honey, so Mom decided to use some of our wildflower honey instead (which is also the best type of honey to use if you want help with allergies).

Feel free to use orange blossom honey for your granola if it’s your favorite. You can read about and purchase the different types of raw honey, including orange blossom, at the store front of our main website.

Be sure to check back for more orange blossom honey recipes!

- Cheryl

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Many recipes use honey as an ingredient, and Orange Blossom Honey is often the honey of choice.

This quick and simple recipe is a great way to add new flare to an old favorite.

Broccoli Salad
2 bunches of broccoli, chopped
2 cups of grated cheese
1 medium onion, chopped
mix well

1 cup of mayonnaise
2 tbsp vinegar
3 tbsp orange blossom honey (or honey of your choice)
mix well

Pour over salad just before serving.

Purchase raw and natural Orange Blossom Honey online from the Blue Ridge Honey Company.

Be sure to check back for more orange blossom honey recipes!

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