Honey

With Rosh Hashana approaching I’ve been contemplating recipes with honey (including honey cake, but more on that later). When I realized just how much honey I was going to need for baking over the next week, and looked in my pantry, I came to the conclusion that I have a little bit of a honey problem:

lots o'honey

I love honey. I love honey in any sweet item. I love topping vanilla ice cream with honey. I love honey in my tea. I’ve been know to occasionally stick a spoon in a jar of honey and lick it.  Due to my ridiculous hay fever, I have also developed an obsession over local honeys, because someone once casually mentioned to me that it might be a homeopathic remedy.  Seriously, set up a stand at my farmers market, tell me its local and I’ll pay way more than I

should for your honey.  I have a very large rosemary bush in my front yard that is currently blooming and full of bees and if I though I could do it, I would follow the bees back to their hive just to have the localist of honey possible. In reality, the Claritin is way more helpful but it allows me to justify these purchases.  Anyway, some of the recipes I am working with call for honey liqueur.  This stuff is crazy expensive, like $30/bottle, so I decided to make my own. Most recipes called for a vodka base, but due to my personal imbibing preference, I decided to use bourbon. Given that these recipes tend to call for such flavors as cinnamon and vanilla, why not use a liquor that has those undertones already… plus I am willing to drink the unused portion. After reading several recipes online I came up with the following:

1 cup honey

1 cup water

2 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/2 cups bourbon

Bring honey and water to boil, boiling for 6-8 minutes. Skim off any foam that rises to the surface . Add vanilla. Boil for about 1 more minute. Remove from heat and stand until just warm (anything over 115 F will start to evaporate the alcohol) .  Transfer honey syrup to a clean container add bourbon and shake.

Supposedly this gets better with age but I will let you know.

Honey Liqueur