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Sunday, July 23, 2017

Baking with Honey I: Honey-Lavender Cake

We harvested honey a couple of weeks ago - T and me, plus S and T's friend. It was a lot of fun, if somewhat improvised... My estimate was that we got 18 kilos of honey - so I guess I ended up with about 8 kilos. I still have some from last year, so realized I'd better start experimenting more with baking and other projects using honey. Last weekend, I tried two quite different honey cake recipes. This is the first (Ottolenghi - full recipe here). It is very similar to a cake I made with L, back at Mill Hill Road in Norwich, when we had a teaparty - it was a different recipe (I still have it in my recipe folder but we were never quite sure about the quantities) - we were very proud of it then, but I never made it since. I always thought about it, so it sprang to mind instantly when I was thinking about honey recipes. I used lavender from the garden as well. I took it for C's birthday party/dinner, and it ended up being her birthday cake, with candles and all!

For the cake:
225 g unsalted butter, at room temperature
115 g sugar
115 g honey
3 eggs
245 g flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp chopped dried lavender, plus more for garnish (used fresh)
1/2 tsp grated lemon zest
110 ml sour cream (used yoghurt instead)

For the glaze:
4 tsp lemon juice (one lemon is enough)
2 tsp honey
100 g icing sugar

Heat the oven to 325F / 163C. Grease a 9-inch cake tin, line the bottom with parchment paper, and butter and flour the base paper. Cream the butter, sugar, and honey together until light and fluffy. Beat the eggs lightly together and slowly incorporate into the butter mixture. Mix the dry ingredients together (all remaining ingredients but the sour cream / yoghurt) and stir well. Fold 1/3 of the flour mixture gently into the butter base, then about 1/3 of the yoghurt. Repeat twice more until all ingredients are just incorporated. Turn the batter into your prepared cake tin and bake in the oven for about 50 min, or until a cake tester comes out clean.

Note that honey browns very quickly in the oven, so if you notice this happening, you can tent your cake with foil for the duration. When the cake is done, remove it from the oven and allow it to cool for about ten min, then place on a rack to cool.

When cool, transfer to a plate and make the icing: whisk the lemon juice and honey together, then whisk in the icing sugar (ideally pre-sifted to remove lumps). Drizzle/spread over your cake, allowing the icing to trickle down the sides. Sprinkle with additional lavender flowers. Allow icing to set, and serve.

I thought the lavender might be a bit subtle, but it was a nice, moist cake. It went down pretty well (I think). The icing got good feedback too - it was thick and spreadable and maintained a good layer - it's perhaps a good idea to use for other cakes too!
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