Honey dipper
While I’m waiting to meet some honey customers in town today, I’m grabbing lunch at a fab little cafe in Kallio, Helsinki.
Tea & coffee is included as part of the lunch buffet, and as I go to make myself a cuppa, I encounter a HONEY DIPPER.
It sits inside a red glass jar, the lid propped off to the side to allow the dipper’s stem to poke out.
It’s good timing to encounter this honey dipper — just yesterday I received a message from some Dutch friends, asking my opinion on the tool.
As I face it in this cafe, the response I gave to my friends feel validated.
Honey dippers look great. Artistic. Wooden things are always beautiful. The glass jar this one sits in, is also aesthetically pleasing.
But...
I lift the lid of the jar, I grasp the stem of the dipper: it is covered with honey. Yech.
Between sticky fingers, I twirl the runny honey (because of course, it wouldn’t work for any other kind of honey).
As I drizzle it into my coffee, I wonder two things:
how many ambient bits have fallen thru the open covering
how much honey is actually going into my cup — it’s not easy to measure like this
Once I (maybe) have enough honey, I need to pick up a spoon to stir my concoction anyway. I guess we’re not saving on dirty dishes. (Same would go for dipper-drizzled honey on toast or porridge — we’d want a knife to spread, a spoon to scoop, etc.)
I also wonder how often the jar needs to be topped up. Transferring honey between tubs seems like unnecessary effort…
In a cafe setting with presumably plenty of people using the honey, it seems fair enough to leave the dipper in the jar all day. But what happens at night — and what happens if you’re using one of these things at home?
Would you leave your dipper in (risking ants, stuff falling into your honey, sticky stems, etc)? Or would you clean it after every use?
And how would you clean the dipper anyway? Running it under hot water? What a waste of honey. You’d need to be quite thorough to get the grooves fully clean, too.
Is there anything a honey dipper actually does better than a spoon or knife...?
… nah, I don’t think so.
PS: My favourite honey tools are the faithful teaspoon or knife — metal or wooden. Those wooden ‘butter’ knives work beautifully!