Cooking with Honeycomb

I get a lot of requests for honeycomb from some of my more seasoned friends and neighbours as they learned to love it when that was the normal way honey was sold. My younger customers love the idea and look of honeycomb, but they are not sure what to do with it. So here are some ideas and recipes for using and cooking with Honeycomb! And to avoid any doubt - YES, it is edible, it is good for you, you can swallow it, and it is delicious.

Basic ideas for using Honeycomb

• Like normal honey, you can spread honeycomb, wax and all, on toast, crumpets, muffins, fresh crusty bread.
• Honeycomb is delicious with yogurt; my preference is for a chunk of honeycomb with cold greek yogurt. 
• Honeycomb is great with ice-cream too; try it with a good quality vanilla ice cream, or frozen yogurt!
• Cheese. No, really, honey comb on a cheese board is a fantastic addition to the final course and will be a real conversation piece for your guests. But don't wait for guests - try it yourself, honey comb goes really well with most of the traditional british cheeses (Cheddar, Lancashire, Wenslydale, Cheshire), but I like it with those great nutty european cheeses too, like Emmental and Yarlsberg.
• My favourite use for honey is on porridge (or oatmeal) and honey comb can also be used in this way. I have been told it is great on rice pudding too, but I haven't tried that yet.
• If you like pancakes with maple syrup, try honeycomb instead. Works on waffles too, if you like those.

Using honey in cooking instead of sugar works well, but you need to remember that (a) it has a liquidity that granulated sugar does not have and that (b) it is sweeter than sugar, up to twice as sweet, so you should not need as much honey - always taste it to get an idea how sweet it is. The key is to experiment!

Here are some links to some of my favourite honey recipes on my recommended honey recipe websites.

• Yummly gives you a variety of interesting honey recipes, but I recommend the Honey Teriyaki Chicken. 
• The BBC Food website has a section on honey; try their Bara Brith traditional Welsh cake made with honey or their Honey Roast Parsnips.  
• The Guardian website has a nice '10 best honey recipes' article worth reading; I recommend the rack of lamb with honey and lavender. 
• There are lots of honey recipes, as you would expect, on the Honey Recipes website. I like his Honey Shortbread for its simplicity and it tastes great. 
• Another honey specific website is the Benefits of Honey website which has a few recipes, ideas, tips, health articles and lots more. Check out the intreging Honey Butter recipe.