EDBK Winter Social 4th December 2025
Cooking with Honey
The Tasting
Attended by over 30 members
The Cooking with Honey event at last year’s Winter Social was a great success, so we thought we would repeat the exercise in 2025. Diane Shepstone from Bradford BKA has continued to print ‘Cooking with Honey’ recipes in BBKA News magazine. At our October meeting, members were asked if they would be prepared to create some of these recipes and share the results with everyone at a winter meeting.
As before, the response was immediate, with six intrepid volunteers taking away a recipe of their choice to practice and prepare for the tasting event. Although this was not seen as a cookery competition, we also devised a simple scoring system, just to find out how popular the dishes were.
The dishes
In no particular order:
Roger tackled the Honey Curd Tart , published in the May 2025 edition of BBKA News. This is a traditional Yorkshire dish. A crisp, blind-baked pastry case is filled with a curd made from cottage cheese and currants, flavoured with nutmeg and lemon. Roger did say that he cheated a little by using a bought pastry. Preparation time about 1½hr, including cooling. The list of ingredients is mouth-watering.
Annie chose to prepare the Winter roasted roots and lentil salad recipe (published February 2025). This salad brings together warm, honey roasted vegetables, earthy lentils with sharp cheese and a tangy citrus dressing. The recipe uses three winter vegetables; beetroot, carrots and parsnips. Preparation time approx. 50 minutes. The combination of ingredients provides a strongly flavoured dish.
Mary whipped up the Feta and honey dip (September 2025 issue of BBKA News). With a preparation time of 10 minutes, this is a quick, versatile accompaniment to go with food such as baked potato or as a simple dip with crisps, celery sticks, or cheesy nibbles. Serve in a wide dish with a drizzle of honey and a sprinkle of chilli flakes, seeds, chopped nuts or herbs.
This Pecan and carrot cake recipe was displayed by Ben, although made by Sheena who could not be present. The recipe is split into two parts: the cake and the frosting. The cake recipe includes 7 or 8 spices, depending on choice, which gives the product a pleasing kick. Hands on preparation time about 35 minutes + cooling. Sometimes you have to experiment. Ben said the first attempt with the specified rye flour was too dry but the second batch with ordinary flour was fine. You can find the recipe in the March 2025 issue of BBKA News.
Pain d’épices or spiced bread is a classic French quick bread which originated in the Middle Ages. Rosie’s version of this recipe was very spicey! The recipe calls for rye flour but will work just as well with bread flour or gluten-free alternatives. Preparation time 20 minutes with a cooking time approx. I hour. This recipe can be found in the October 2025 issue of BBKA News. Delicious and sustaining.
Anita chose the Summer honey and lime courgette cake from the August 2025 issue of BBKA News. To complicate matters the recipe calls for a quantity of honey lime curd described in the July 2025 issue. Preparation time is about an hour plus ½hr cooking time and the same for cooling. The end result can only be described as ‘more-ish’.
After introducing the dishes and the cooks to the assembled army of tasters we were invited to ‘get tasting’. Each taster had two discs, and when they had sampled as many dishes as they wished they were asked to allocate their discs to the name of their favourite dish in collection boxes. At the end of the evening, the discs for each dish were counted to give an indication of the popularity of each recipe.
And the favourites were…..
Joint 3rd – Pecan and carrot cake / Pain d’épices
2nd – Winter roasted roots and lentil salad
1st – Summer honey and lime courgette cake
If anyone needed more food or drink there was a selection sweet and savoury finger foods on offer, plus tea and coffee.
As usual, our winter Social would not be complete without the Grand Raffle. Organised by Kim and Alasdair, the prizes were artfully displayed, encouraging members to buy lots of tickets.
Val warmly congratulated our volunteer cooks and thanked the team of refreshment organisers and everyone who had helped to make the evening go smoothly.
If members would like a copy of any of these recipes, please contact Mary Boulton (mary.boulton@btinternet.com)