Mason has 11 big beehives which look like miniature Swiss chalets with gabled roofs, and around 40 hives scattered across the park. The bees are lucky to have such an abundance of flora at Regents Park. They feed on whatever is currently in blossom, at the moment, it’s the lime trees and blackberry brambles in the apiary which yield huge amounts of nectar – there’s little need for the bees to stray too far away with such mouth teasers in their back garden. Lime trees, says Mason, give the honey an elderflower and citrus taste.
It takes 21 days for an egg to turn into a bee. We witness a bee being born. It scrambles out through a hole, a bit fluffier than the others. I wish, momentarily, that I were a queen bee. But Mason says it’s better to be a human queen than a bee queen. They get pecked by the others when out on flights. And the queen has no wings – they’ve been clipped – so she can’t fly out when the bees swarm – which is every so often. They like to get away, like the little rebels they are, despite how swish their brambles are. ‘They’re always desperate to swarm and that’s how they split the colony, if they swarm, we lose half of our bees,” says Mason, sadly.
The number of times I’ve marvelled at St Paul’s dome and never known there was a whole café and restaurant hidden in its subterranean arched crypt – apparently the band Elbow even played a private gig there recently and it’s quite a gothic little haunt for such happenings. Who’d know?
So we had a taste of the honey in some of the restaurant’s food, cooked by head chef Gavin Quinn. The restaurant is annexed off from the main crypt and varies from the café in its mezzanine and pistachio paintwork, which offset the white arches. The honey lifted the tang of the cheese in the main of goats cheese ravioli with rocket, honey & walnut dressing. This had a good mix of flavour and texture – oily walnuts, crinkly pink microherbs (don’t ask me which) and al dente pasta.
Recipe for Regent’s Park honey ice
Yield : 21cm x 21cm square tin lined with baking paper
Temp : 160oc
Cooking time: 45 minutes
220g honey
4 egg yolks
400ml double cream
200ml milk
1. Gently warm your honey and slowly pour over egg yolks. Whisk while gently heating 300ml cream and 200ml of milk till boiling point.
2. Then gradually add your hot cream mixture to your honey and yolks. Return to a clean pan and cook over a low heat, stirring consistently, until the custard is thick enough to coat the back of the spoon.
3. Strain through a fine strainer into a bowl and allow to cool.
4. Whisk the remaining cream to a firm but not buttery consistency and fold through the chilled custard. Place in the same sized tray as the ginger cake.
For the ginger cake
110s butter
110g sugar
110g black treacle
1 egg
170g plain flour
1tsp ground ginger
1/2tsp ground cinnamon
145ml warm milk
1 tsp bicarbonate soda
1. Melt butter, sugar and treacle in a saucepan. Then allow to cool.
2. Add eggs, whisking to incorporate.
3. Sift flour, cinnamon and ginger into the treacle mixture.
4. Warm the milk so it is just above body temperature. Once the milk is warm add the bicarbonate of soda. (This will activate the bicarb almost like sherbet in your mouth, making the cake rise once combined together and heated.)
5. Add milk to your treacle mix, pour into your tin and bake till a skewer once inserted comes out clean.
6. The cake should have a sticky top. Cool in tin. Once cool wrap in silicone paper and store till needed.
To assemble, slice ginger cake in half lengthways and fill the ginger bread with the ice as you would a sandwich. Dress with ginger syrup to finish.