Whipped honey...

Do you remember Sue Bee Spun Honey from back in the day -- the milky, smooth honey that you could actually spread on your bread with a knife?  A year or so ago, I was reminiscing about that lovely honey and wondering if I could make a similar product at home with the raw honey I bought from our local bee keeper.  The answer:  Yes!  I found easy-to-follow instructions from Bite my cake and have been making it ever since.

Basically, you start  with raw honey that is crystallized and thick.  Mine looks something like the picture below.  It's fairly yellow and has flecks of bee stuff in it -- wings, legs, pollen, and other goodies that bees carry into the hives.  I take my gallon of raw honey and gently melt the outer edges in a bowl of just-boiled water.  When it has softened up a little and there's some liquified honey around the edges of the container, that's when I pour the whole thing into my stand mixer.  When you pour it from your container into your mixing bowl, you will notice that the majority of the honey is still crystallized.  With whip attachments on, start the mixer and whip that honey for quite some time -- between 15-20 minutes.  The honey will magically turn from yellow to a creamy white.  It's a molecular thing that happens between the crystals and the liquid honey that gives it the spreadable consistency and milky color.

I pour my whipped honey into smaller jars.  Either jelly jars or wide-mouth pint jars work best.  You want to be able to get into the jars easily with a table knife or spoon.  As the honey cools from the whipping process, it will firm up more and become a glorious honey-butter of sorts.  Store your whipped honey in a fairly cool cupboard and it will set up beautifully.

 Whipped honey is so easy to use in comparison to runny-honey.  You can spoon out just a little bit or a lot without all the drippy mess, and you can spread it on bread or toast just as efficiently as you can spread peanut butter.  We absolutely LOVE it.

Today Peach and Toodles were here while their parents went grocery shopping in town with baby brother in tow.  Peach asked if we could have tea and scones after lunch, and that sounded perfectly lovely to me.  I made a pot of Citron Oolong and we had biscuits and honey.  Deeeee-lish!

 

The shearers were supposed to come tomorrow to shear the sheep, but we had a couple inches of snow overnight and more snow during the day today so the sheep are wet with snowy wool.  We'll have to wait and see if they melt off tomorrow and dry out enough to shear on Saturday.  We're just about 10 days away from having baby lambs!  Stay tuned.