For the Biology Challenge, I was at first at a serious loss. After last week's pemmican ordeal, I couldn't stand the thought of meat, or rendering, or meat. But it was all I could think of. Hours of anguish passed, during which time my arteries noticeably hardened. I eventually settled on honey as my ingredient.

Here's the biology bit: Honey can fairly accurately be called "bee vomit." The primary ingredient is nectar, collected from various and sundry flowers by worker honey bees. When a bee collects nectar, it stores it in a special digestive sac called a "crop," where the nectar's natural sugars (sucrose) are broken down into fructose and glucose. Once the bee has made it home again, it barfs up the half-digested nectar and stores it in honeycombs. Next, days-old worker bees (who knew bees use child labor?) beat their wings to ventilate the open honeycombs, in order to reduce the substance to a purer sugar. When the moisture content falls below 18%, it is officially honey, all done, the cell in the comb is capped off, and the bees move onto other things, such as making additional honey. Except for the slacker bees, who do nothing but try to get laid, and who are driven out of the hive in the autumn to starve to death. I swear I am not making any of this up.

If the process is so... well... kind of gross... why, then, have people been jonesing for honey for tens of thousands of years? First, we had no idea how it was really made until fairly recently. But second, honey is pure, ungranulated, sticky sweetness, the likes of which is not available naturally from any other source. Sure, you can take your maple sap and your high-fructose corn syrup; but neither of these has that good ol' sugar kick straight from the source. They require cooking and reducing and other inconvenient methods of processing to reach a similar consistency.

Even aside from the sugar factor, honey has a myriad of subtle flavors, depending on the variety of flower harvested by the bee. I tend to buy a raw wild honey, because it has a deep, rich flavor I really enjoy. Other people find it too strong, and prefer the citrusy aroma of orange blossom honey, for example. Honey cooks at a lower temperature than table sugar, as well, and sometimes results in an end product with a silkier texture. Sadly, this was not entirely true, in my case.

Honey also has some killer antibacterial properties, and because of this, combined with its low moisture content, it acts as a natural preservative. In my case, I decided to make a honey-based dessert, to take advantage of the sweetness, the texture, and the fact that it might kill any residual pemmican-related bacteria in my kitchen. Honeycake isn't typically served until Rosh Hashanah, NEXT week, but what with the whole preservative thing, I figure the stuff will stick around until then in good shape.

The two recipes I selected were Honey Saffron Ice Cream and Honey Spice Cake, with a honey-citrus drizzle of my own creation, and mint garnish. This ensemble was a challenge to me for many reasons:

The complete gallery of my adventure is available on Flickr. I got too close to my deadline to intersperse photos. Sorry, guys.

First, the ice cream. I chose this recipe, specifically, because it called for no table sugar whatsoever. Simmer some saffron, mix in some honey, check. Cream, milk, egg yolks, stirred into a custard. This is, I think, where things started to go wrong. I had not-quite enough cream, and substituted extra milk. According to the recipe, the ice cream base should have turned into custard within about ten minutes...but BE SURE NOT TO LET IT BOIL, the directions said. I stirred and stirred and stirred. Ten minutes passed with no noticable change of temperature. I fiddled with the temperature, whisked instead of stirred, desparately trying to get this stuff to thicken. It eventually became a bit thicker, after around thirty-five minutes. Where did I go wrong? Too hot, too cold? Was it the extra milk? Anyone? Bueller? At any rate, I eventually decided it was @$%& well thickened enough, and let the custard cool.

Next for the cake. The lovely, beautiful, honey spice cake. I did fiddle with the recipe, adding in about a teaspoon of orange zest. Also, I suffered from poor reading comprehension, and added in all the sugar too early, leading me to add extra sugar for the meringue, later on. The cake turned out beautifully, though.

During the cake-baking, we received a call from my in-laws. Lobster, their house, stat. We packed the still-hot cake, the cooling custard, the ice cream maker, mint for garnish, and a few hasty ingredients for the syrup into the back of my car. Also I walked into the web of a spider the size of, I kid you not, a nickel, while fetching the freezer bowl from the garage. This is not related to the food, but I was traumatized and so I have to share. Once we got to our destination, we set up the ice cream maker and ate our lobster. Mmmmmyummy.

After the requisite thirty minutes, the ice cream still hadn't achieved the firmness I'd been hoping for, so we packed it into a deep freezer for another half hour or so. Meanwhile, I cooked the drizzle glaze: a tiny bit of leftover saffron-honey syrup, mixed with additional honey, orange marmalade, lemon juice, cinnamon, and some water and corn starch to thicken. It turned into a really nice glaze with a good, citrusy zing to it.

Now for.... the plating. I think it made for a really pretty presentation. And how did it all taste? The spice cake was a good, solid cake, and the orange in it went really well with the orange of the glaze. The ice cream ended up still pretty soft, like a custard, and was, sadly, a little grainy, not unlike tapioca. And although it had a nice color, the tea-like flavor of saffron in the original syrup was totally lost by the time the ice cream cooled. I don't know if it was the recipe, or my own muddled execution. Still, the entire desert got kudos.

And nobody complained about being served bee puke, either.