Kitchen tip for honey lovers

Here’s my quick and simple tip for Kitchen Tip Tuesdays, hosted by Tammy’s Recipes.

I don’t use regular white or brown sugar (any processed sugar, for that matter) in my cooking or baking. Instead, I use honey, molasses and sometimes maple syrup. There are a few challenges to doing this (substituting honey for sugar in recipes in one of those issues, which I’ll try to post about soon).

The other challenge is that because honey is so sticky and thick, it’s hard to get it all out of measuring cups and spoons while baking or cooking. Here’s a simple little trick I learned to make it simple to get all of your honey out of the cup: If the recipe calls for any oil, melted butter, etc. measure that first, and then measure your honey in the same cup/spoon/pyrex that you used for the oil. It will slide out so easily, and you won’t lose any of it.

If I’m not using any oil in my recipe, or the amounts are completely different (1 cup of oil, 1 Tbsp of honey), then I will just use my little olive oil spray (the kind that you pump and use to spray on baking sheets, etc.) to lightly coat the measuring tool before I use it. Before I had the oil spray bottle, I would just pour a small amount in a measuring cup, and use my finger to lightly coat the surface, then pour out the excess oil if necessary.

This works wonderfully for any sticky liquid, especially molasses! Mmmmm… molasses. Now I’m craving ginger snaps!