Kitchen helper
How much honey instead of sugar?
By weight, use roughly the same amount of honey as sugar: instead of 100 g sugar, about 100 g honey, which is about 5 tablespoons. But honey also adds liquid to the mixture and browns more quickly – the converter works that out too, in grams, tablespoons or cups.
- Honey
- 50 g
- ≈ 2.5 tablespoons
- 45–65 g: less makes it less sweet, more makes it softer
- Sugar left
- 50 g
- Liquid: no need to reduce with this much honey (at most about 9 ml less).
- Oven: about 15 °C lower, because honey browns sooner.
- Bicarbonate of soda: about 0.3 g (a pinch), if it's not a yeast dough and the recipe has no bicarbonate of soda already.
Measuring tip: oil the spoon lightly first and the honey slides off completely. For drip-free pouring, use the honey dispenser.
Conversion table
If you replace all the sugar in the recipe with honey:
| Sugar | Honey | Less liquid |
|---|---|---|
| 50 g | 50 g (≈ 2.5 tbsp) | about 9 ml (optional) |
| 100 g | 100 g (≈ 5 tbsp) | about 18 ml |
| 150 g | 150 g (≈ 7 tbsp) | about 27 ml |
| 200 g | 200 g (≈ 9.5 tbsp) | about 36 ml |
| 250 g | 250 g (≈ 12 tbsp) | about 45 ml |
| 300 g | 300 g (≈ 14.5 tbsp) | about 54 ml |
How we calculate
Runny honey is roughly as sweet as sugar, but about 17–18% of it is water. So we use the same weight of honey and reduce the liquid in the mixture by about a fifth of the honey's weight: with 100 g honey you need about 18 ml less water, milk or fruit juice. Don't reduce the eggs or the fat.
The sugars in honey caramelise at a lower temperature, so set the oven about 15 °C lower and keep an eye on the colour. Honey is slightly acidic: if the recipe isn't yeasted and has no bicarbonate of soda in it, a pinch (about 0.5 g) of bicarbonate of soda per 100 g honey balances it out.
Most people don't weigh honey but spoon it in: a tablespoon of honey is about 21 g, so 100 g honey is roughly 5 tablespoons. If the sugar in your recipe is given in cups or spoons, you can choose that in the converter too: a 250 ml cup of granulated sugar is about 210 g, a tablespoon about 12.5 g.
Why do you read elsewhere that you should use "three-quarters as much honey"? American recipes measure in cups: a cup of sugar is about 200 g, but a cup of honey is about 340 g, because honey is denser. So "three-quarters of a cup" actually means more honey in grams, not less.
When not to swap the sugar
- Meringues, caramel and icing: here the sugar crystals give the structure.
- Crisp biscuits: with honey the dough turns softer and chewier.
- Sponge cake: the whisked eggs are stabilised by the sugar.
- For a first try, swap only half the sugar – that's the converter's default setting too.
For baking we recommend our wildflower honey; you'll find more tips in our article on baking and cooking with honey and among our honey recipes.
Sources
- National Honey Board – the sweetness of honey and substituting it for sugar
- National Honey Board – frequently asked questions (baking with honey)
- University of Missouri Extension – cooking and baking with honey
- University of Kentucky – honey in the kitchen
- King Arthur Baking – ingredient weight chart (spoon, cup)