Monday 21 May 2012

Floral Honey Cake


When this month's alphabake challenge was announced as the letter 'H' I had a quick think about which ingredients would fit. Hmm, more difficult than it sounded this month. I think we were eased in relatively easily with L, M and B. H is more tricky. I turned to my baking books and had a look in the indexes, which confirmed that there is actually very little under H. Two ingredients popped up time and again. Hazelnuts and Honey. I subsequently had a harder think and came up with a number of other H's; hummingbird, herbs, horlicks (?!) and then a hedgehog slice.


But actually I love honey so I decided to keep it simple and go for one of the obvious options (hazelnuts having been ruled out by allergy). I love the diversity of honey - the different colours, textures and flavours and just think it's such a wonderful natural product. What bees do for our life is utterly amazing and I wouldn't like to imagine life without them. (Wasps on the other hand ... begone nasty wasps)

I nearly bought heather honey to make this a double H entry, but then saw this beautiful Leatherwood honey. I've had this before and as the jar describes, it's strong and floral in scent, and I knew it would come through beautifully in a cake.

I kept the other ingredients simple to allow the flavour of the honey to shine through and sing. I used light muscovado sugar because this is such a beautiful caramelly complement to the honey.


Floral Honey Cake
Ingredients
60g butter
40g light muscovado sugar
40g honey (mine was tasmanian leatherwood honey)
1 large egg
80g self raising flour

Method
- Preheat the oven to Gas 4/180C. Grease and line a 6"/15cm round tin. I was using a loose based tin so did the whole base and side lining thing to try and avoid cake mix getting in the tin seams which makes it a pain to clean.
- Cream the butter, sugar and honey until light and fluffy.
- Add the egg and flour and continue to beat until all well combined and light.
- Scrape into the prepared tin and spread around/level off a bit.
- Place in the oven and bake for 30 minutes until springy to the touch and/or a cake tester inserted comes out clean.
- Allow to cool a little then remove from the tin and allow to cool completely on a wire rack.

This is such a lovely little cake, as I knew it would be, having made it before! It is moist and delicious and the honey flavour is utterly amazing. The added bonus of making this cake is that the whole time it is baking, the house smells of molten honey, which must be one of the most delicious scents known to man (well, to me!) during baking.



This cake is my entry into the alphabakes challenge this month, with the letter H. Alphabakes is hosted by Ros of The More than Occasional Baker and Caroline of Caroline Makes. The host this month is Caroline.


I am also entering this into Teatime Treats. The theme this month, alternately hosted by this month's host Karen of Lavender and Lovage and Kate of What Kate Baked is Floral or Flowers. I think my honey cake with honey from leatherwood flowers will qualify - after all if there were no flowers we would have very little honey!


6 comments:

Baking Addict said...

Great entry for AlphaBakes - thank you! H is definitely harder and I really had to be creative with my entries. I absolutely love honey and have it in everything - tea/bread/cakes/out of the jar! This cake looks and sounds delicious - I must try it! I must look out for lavender honey - didn't know it existed!

Suelle said...

I'm just imagining the smell of this while it's baking! Such a simple recipe, but a great flavour, I'm sure.

Choclette said...

C, this sounds delicious. I'm so with you on the honey, it's wonderful stuff and honey cake is one of the best. It would be quite fun to have a taste test and bake the same recipe using lots of different honey.

Johanna GGG said...

What a delicious cake - I love honey in baking - I should try experimenting with different honeys - esp as I notice you have used a tasmanian honey

Karen S Booth said...

THANKS so much for this lovely entry into Tea Time Treats for the merry month of May! In LOVE honey in baking and this looks fabulous.....Karen

Caroline said...

Ros - thanks. You can get all sorts of different flavoured honeys. I think they're all lovely!

Suelle - this one is definitely better than it looks, and the smell while it bakes is truly to die for!

Choclette - it would indeed. This recipe is perfect for testing honey flavours because there aren't any other competing flavours.

Johanna - yes, I thought of all my Australian blogging friends as I chose that honey!

Karen - thanks.

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...