Honey

In the last couple of weeks, the bees have started to earn their keep: honey from my backyard. It's seriously tasty and light compared to store-bought honey, and I really think it tastes like apple juice, but that might just be me.

Last weekend, Will realized that a few frames in one hive were full of honey but something was going on (insert beekeeping jargon here) that caused the bees to swarm and leave the hive (but they came back later), and if he didn't get the honey out, the hive would probably get robbed by other bees. Yep, they really do that. Thieves. So he lugged this heavy thing of frames into the kitchen and started harvesting (Is that the right terminology? No clue.)the honey. I sat at the table and chewed on my nails because in my imagination this was going to result in the kitchen being covered in honey. I mean, can you even imagine cleaning honey off of faux brick? (We've really got to renovate the kitchen soon. I'm obsessing about those fake bricks.)Surprisingly though, the process was not that messy and we ended up with several jars of honey.

Before the next batch, Will got a honey extractor which makes the job much easier. First, you have to uncap the hives (I think that's what it's called.) It looks like this:


Then you put the frames in the extractor and spin it. The honey is extracted and drips out the bottom into a bucket. Then, you let it sit for a day in the heat, all the leftover wax floats up, and you fill jars by pouring off the bottom. Here are a couple of snaps.





Will has been selling the jars, but I get dibs on as much as I want, so this afternoon, I made honey cupcakes. (OF COURSE!) I did some googling and apparently back in 2009 the executive pastry chef at the White House made some honey cupcakes too. I used his recipe:

Bill Yosses's White House Honey Cupcakes

Ingredients
1/4 cup softened butter
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup honey
2 eggs
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 tsp. vanilla
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt

For the Icing
2 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup honey
3 Tbsp. lemon juice

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 350°. Line a 12-cup muffin tin with cupcake papers.

2. In a stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, on high speed. Mix in honey, eggs, buttermilk and vanilla until blended, on medium speed.

3. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt, then mix into the batter until just blended. Scoop the batter into the cupcake cups evenly.

4. Bake for about 20 minutes; cupcakes are done when tops spring back lightly to the touch.

To prepare icing
In a small sauce pan, whisk ingredients over medium heat until sugars dissolve together; keep whisking to avoid clumps. Using a spoon, drizzle over the tops of cupcakes, or carefully pour over cupcakes.

Makes one dozen cupcakes.


I did not use this icing recipe though because I didn't want a glaze. I clearly wanted major frosting. I decided that peanut butter icing made the most sense, so I used this recipe which I kind of made up after looking at a bunch of recipes online:

1/4 cup butter
1 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup honey
1-2 cups powdered sugar
1-2 T milk

You kind of have to play with the amount of the sugar and milk until you get the consistency you want. Then I chopped up some peanuts to sprinkle on top.

The picture I took of them was lame so you'll have to picture it in your mind. I will say though that the cupcakes poofed the perfect amount so they had a nice rounded top. I hate a flat cupcake, but these turned out just right. They were pretty tasty and would be good plain sans icing as a muffin, so that's an option too.