How much work the little striped insects and beekeepers put in to obtain this precious product and make it available to humans. And it's a sin not to take advantage of the opportunity to use honey in the modern world of a huge variety of culinary recipes.
The benefits of honey and the rules for choosing a quality product
Honey is a long-known healer of mankind, it is absolutely indispensable in folk medicine at the first signs of colds, honey has high antioxidant properties, which allows the body to cleanse accumulated toxins, has a positive effect on the liver and gastrointestinal tract, is skillfully used in the field of nutrition, replacing forbidden sugar, and cosmetology, being part of many effective masks for our epidermis, has a beneficial effect on the nervous system, fighting stress and insomnia.
A lot can be said about the undeniable benefits of the product, but how to choose good honey with really valuable properties ?!
The main conditions are taste, smell and consistency. Honey should have a pleasant aroma, which differs depending on the type of product, a slightly astringent taste, throat-tingling, and stretching in consistency from July to September, later the honey will begin to be slightly sugared. In general, an ideal purchase would be a jar from the hands of real beekeepers, where you can treat yourself to what you buy. Stores will not provide such an opportunity.
After the real honey is in the kitchen cabinet of the hostess, you can decide on the choice of dessert for dinner or a festive table.
Classic honey cake
The name of the dessert speaks for itself - honey is the main ingredient here, and the more it is put into the dough, the richer and more aromatic the cake will be. This recipe will make about 10 to 12 servings.
Products that will be needed for the cakes:
- wheat flour - 500 grams;
- butter - 150 grams;
- honey - 2 - 3 tablespoons;
- sugar - 1 glass;
- eggs - 2 pieces;
- soda - 1 teaspoon;
- salt.
Cream products:
- butter - 250 grams;
- icing sugar - 200 grams;
- sour cream - 300 grams.
Step by step recipe:
- Take a saucepan with a thick bottom, break the eggs there and add sugar and a pinch of salt.
- Beat the egg and sugar mixture with a mixer until a thick white foam is formed.
- Put the saucepan on low heat and immediately add 2 tablespoons of honey and 150 grams of butter.
- Stirring constantly, bring the batter to a boil and add 1 tablespoon of baking soda - the mass will begin to foam and bubble, after which it is necessary to remove the pan from the heat.
- Gradually add flour to the hot mass, continuously stirring the dough. The amount of flour in the recipe is indicated roughly, someone may take 400 grams, someone 500 grams. You need to start from the fact that the dough should eventually become thick, ready to be rolled out with a rolling pin. But it is also important not to hammer the dough so that the dessert does not turn out to be tough.
- When the dough has become more or less thick, then put it on a large cutting board and bring to the required consistency, kneading it by hand. Care is required here, as the dough can still be hot and you can burn your hands.
- Then divide the dough into 10 - 12 parts, roll up the balls, sprinkle with flour and put on a plate, covered with cling film so that the dough does not wind up. Refrigerate for 40 minutes.
- During this time, you can prepare a cream: put butter softened at room temperature in a deep bowl, add powdered sugar and beat well until the butter turns white. Gradually add home-made sour cream at room temperature into the oil mixture, kneading the cream with a whisk. Delicate butter cake dressing is ready.
- Take the dough out of the refrigerator and start rolling out thin cakes, no more than 1 cm thick.
- Bake the cakes alternately in the oven for 5 - 7 minutes each. Collect all the scraps from the cakes in a bag and crush them by running the rolling pin several times over the bag on a cutting board. From these scraps, you will get a powder for decorating a honey cake.
- When all the cakes are ready to let them cool down and you can start assembling the dessert.
- Flavor each donut with cream, carefully smearing the edges of the cake. When all the crumpets are greased, then sprinkle the dessert on all sides with crumbs from crushed scraps. The fabulous delicacy will be ready in about 3 to 4 hours, when it is well saturated.
Apples baked with honey
If you want to enjoy a dessert with a low calorie content, then you should opt for this particular option.
Products for cooking:
- apples - 10 pieces;
- honey - 10 teaspoons;
- walnuts - 50 - 60 grains;
- vanilla sugar - 2 sachets, 5 grams each.
Cooking method:
For this dessert, it is better to choose hard apples so that they remain juicy during the cooking process. Wash the fruit, dry it, cut off the tops and pull out the core with seeds, making a cone-shaped depression. Chop walnuts - you can use a rolling pin, you can go through a meat grinder. Add vanilla sugar and honey to them. Mix everything well and fill the empty apple core. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Put the dessert on a greased baking sheet and put in the oven for 15 minutes.
Baklava
A common dessert for Eastern countries, the excellently delicate taste of which, albeit high in carbohydrates, makes it so desirable for many with a sweet tooth. But in our country, not everyone can cook baklava exactly the way the eastern peoples prepare it. This will require some - no experience in the manufacture of such confectionery products. But whoever is not mistaken will not learn anything, so it is worthwhile to start cooking complex desserts sometime. For baklava you will need:
- sour cream - 200 grams;
- butter - 300 grams (100 grams for pouring);
- wheat flour - 500 grams;
- chicken eggs - 2 pieces;
- nuts - 3 cups;
- baking powder - 1 teaspoon;
- sugar - 3 cups (1 glass for pouring);
- honey - 50 grams;
- water - 150 ml;
- spices to taste.
Step-by-step cooking:
- Remove 200 grams of butter from the refrigerator in advance, cut into pieces and leave in a warm place so that it has time to soften before the dough starts.
- Separate the yolk from the white of one egg. Pour the yolk into a deep bowl, add soft butter and sour cream. Mix everything well.
- Pour flour mixed with baking powder into a bowl, its amount may vary slightly, either in a smaller or larger direction - it all depends on the manufacturer of the flour used.
- If you want the color of the confection to be deep brown, then at this stage you can add sugar syrup to the mixture, which will make the already high-calorie dessert sweeter.
- Quickly knead the puff pastry, put in the refrigerator for 1, 5 - 2 hours. You can start preparing the filling.
- Peel the nuts. You can take almost any kind of nuts, but for the sake of economy, you can mix walnuts with peanuts, for example. Then grind them using a special blender or meat grinder, initially leaving a few pieces to decorate the baklava. Add sugar and spices to the nuts, mix well.
- Taking out the chilled dough and dividing it into several parts are the future layers of an oriental dessert. On average, you will get from 4 to 6 pieces.
- Roll each part into the thinnest possible layer and cut to the size of the form in which the baklava will be baked.
- Divide the nuts into several parts - it depends on how many layers there will be in the product. For example, if there are 5 layers, then divide the nuts into 4 parts.
- Grease the form with butter and lay out a layer of dough, on top of the filling of nuts and sugar, then again a layer of dough and on top of the filling, so lay out all the layers. You do not need to sprinkle the top layer with nuts.
- Cut the collected baklava in the form into portioned pieces - in the classic version, these are rhombuses. Leave the last bottom layer uncut so that the filling does not flow onto the mold, and the dessert is juicy and soaked. Decorate each diamond with a nut seed and brush with whipped yolk.
- Put the mold in an oven preheated to 200 degrees, after 15 minutes, remove and update the slots and pour with melted butter. Put in the oven again for 40 minutes.
- Put water with sugar on fire and cook until thick. When the syrup has cooled down a little, add honey.
- After all the layers are baked, pour the second filling - honey syrup.
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Dessert is ready. Now you can cut the baklava completely into diamonds and put it on a plate for serving.
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