Sugar Today, Honey Tomorrow

Here I am, deciding to experiment with my most prized chocolate chip cookie recipe by replacing the sugar with honey, and this is what I have going through my head: "Sugar, Sugar", by The Archies.  If you haven't heard it, it begins a little something like this: 

Sugar, oh, honey, honey

You are my candy girl

And you got me wanting you

Honey, oh, sugar, sugar

You are my candy girl

And you got me wanting you

The original music video from 1969 can be found here, if you want to hear it for yourself.  As for the video itself, it's taken from an animated show from the 60's. Enough said. 

With a song in my head and honey, honey in my measuring cup, I put my trusty Kitchen-Aid mixer to work churning up everything, but the sugar, sugar.  To be more specific, I omitted the granulated white sugar, not the brown sugar.  The brown sugar is no less refined, but I figured I would keep it in the recipe this time around.  It just may be that I will need to remove both types of sugar in an experiment for another day.  This recipe historically yields a cookie that looks very much like what can be seen in the picture above.  The cookie is lightly crispy on the edges and chewy in the middle, which is exactly why I love this recipe.

Much to my chagrin, however, the cookies that emerged from the oven were very flat. This, for me, ruins the aesthetics of the perfect chocolate chip cookie.  And, because of the honey, the cookie is prone to browning much darker in the same amount of time than if it had it's granulated counterpart. As for taste, I would say they are enjoyable.  The honey doesn't overpower the cookie; the presence of it is very inconspicuous.  Of course, being thinner means that once cooled, they turned out very crispy.

On the off chance that anyone is wondering why I would choose to try and reinvent a perfectly good cookie recipe, I can explain.  I have been reading more and more about "clean" eating.  In a nutshell, this means that eating processed foods are out, and if eating/using anything packaged, it should have five ingredients or less.  White granulated sugar, as I use in all of my baked goods, really does go through the wringer to become the product we use on such a daily basis.  Honey, on the other hand, isn't refined from hive to table.  It really is a "clean" product.

In any case, my experiment wasn't a complete bust.   After about 4 dozen cookies were made, I put the rest of the cookie dough in a 13"x 9" pan and tried making them into bars instead.  I was slightly happier with this outcome due to the fact that the bars stayed soft and chewy.

The quest continues, though, for more ways to bake with honey.