Category Archives: Recipes

Recipes

Spiced Honey Liqueur

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Here’s a recipe for a real winter warmer – and a great way to use up some of your enormous honey harvest!

Ingredients

  • 1 cinnamon stick
  • 6 bruised cardamon pods
  • 5 cloves
  • 1 tsp grated nutmeg
  • 1 tsp ground black pepper
  • 1 vanilla pod
  • 1 tbsp grated orange peel
  • 0.5 tbsp grated lemon peel
  • 4 thin slices of ginger
  • 1.5lb mildly flavoured honey
  • Juice of 2 small oranges with enough water to make 1 pint
  • 1 pint Vodka

Method

  1. Put the spices and sliced ginger with the orange juice and water into a stainless steel saucepan;
  2. Bring to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes;
  3. Add the orange and lemon peel and the honey;
  4. Bring back to the boil then take off the heat and allow to steep for 15 minutes with the lid on;
  5. Strain through muslin;
  6. Add the Vodka;
  7. Drink – rather nice hot but I think you are supposed to store it away for a bit.
  8. Cheers!
This portrait of Bacchus at the vodka was painted by Jan van Dalen in 1648

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2015.  All Rights Reserved.

Disease, Honey, Recipes

Honey with Gin Innit

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Here’s a honey recipe to help you forget your cold or flu or whatever it is that ails you.

Ingredients

  • 50mls gin
  • 15mls lemon juice
  • 10 mls honey
  • 5 mls water

Method

  • Mix all the ingredients together;
  • Pour over 3 ice cubes;
  •  Add a slice of lemon.

Repeat as necessary.

Of course if you have ivy honey – use that, as it is said to be especially good for colds and chesty coughs.

Cheers!

Click here for more recipes

Click here for more about ivy honey

Click here for how to get a crop of ivy honey

Click here for more about ivy as a bee tree

 

Recipes

Chilli Honey Recipe

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Here’s a recipe that’ll blow your socks off but you’ll need really hot chillis for this, not those namby-pamby, supermarket chillis.

Ingredients
  • 500g honey
  • 30g of small red-hot chillis
Method
  • Cut the tops off the chillis and chop them up – include the seeds;
  • Stir the chopped chillis into the honey and warm it up to 40-50 degrees C and leave for about 10 minutes;
  • If not hot enough, leave a bit longer or add more chilli;
  • If too hot, remove chillis and add more honey;
  • Strain through muslin or a fine sieve and Bob’s your uncle.

This is really good with grilled meats such as sausages or chicken and even pizza.

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2015.  All Rights Reserved.

 

 

Recipes, Things to do in February, Things to do in March

Spring Pollen Substitute

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This is a recipe for an emergency pollen substitute (adapted from a Scottish Beekeepers recipe) I used last year. It saved  several hives which would otherwise have fizzled out. This is for early spring use  or when they have run out of pollen.

Please note – when bees become very weak they will not take a pollen substitute; they seem to lose the will to live and only sunshine will save them. Continue reading Spring Pollen Substitute →

Beeswax, Life, Recipes, Things to do in December, Things to do in February, Things to do in January

Beeswax Soap Recipe

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I used to think that homemade soap would be a great way to use up some of that beeswax mountain. That is until I started to look into the subject and it turns out to be a bit more complicated than I thought.

For a start there’s the matter of CAUSTIC SODA. Note the capital letters there; those are there as a mark of Respect. When using Caustic Soda, be on your Toes because it is a VERY NASTY chemical indeed. Wear gloves, don’t spill it and don’t blame me if you do. Continue reading Beeswax Soap Recipe →

Honey, Recipes, Things to do in January

Burns Night Special

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Brighten up your Burns night supper with some Scottish Flummery. Not an adjective but a noun!

According to Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary of 1901 Flummery is an ‘acid jelly made from the husks of oats’ and water but it has since come to mean ‘an empty compliment or anything insipid’. A recipe for traditional Flummery seems to bear this out, with its description of a rather flaccid, glutinous dish, resembling porridge but with the oats carefully removed. Continue reading Burns Night Special →