Honey Cake

I have recently caught the baking-bug again (yay!) and stumbled across this recipe for a honey cake. I'd never tried one before, and neither had my family, so decided to surprise them seeing as the cake is so simple and speedy to make and less ingredients than usual are needed. Obviously unsure of what to expect, this cake turned out so well and I had to make another one 2 days later as it had all, ahem, mysteriously disappeared. It's really light, chewy and not as sweet as I was expecting it to be with all that sugar and honey, but it's quite a shallow cake- probably for the best else it'd be too sickly- so don't panic if you think yours doesn't rise much. Yes, it's calorific (nearly 300cal per serving) and very high in sugars, but it's such a gooey, indulgent cake it's not worth resisting!

Vital Numbers

• Serves 8
• 10 mins to make, 30 mins to bake
• Oven at 180ºC/ Gas mark4

Ingredients

• 125g clear honey (plus a few tbsp for drizzling on top)
• 75g caster sugar
• 125g unsalted butter (I just ordinary baking spread the second time and it worked fine)
• 2 eggs
• 175g self raising flour
• If you have it, a little bit of icing sugar to dust
• Not necessary but a little bit of lemon juice and/or golden syrup

How to:

The icing sugar had started to disappear, sorry!

1.  Preheat the oven to 180ºC/ Gas mark 4. Grease and line you cake tin (approx. 20cm base is perfect).
2. Put your honey, sugar and butter into a small pan and heat gently, stirring until it's all melted together. Instead of just using honey, I only used about 115g worth of it and made the rest up with a bit of golden syrup just to give it a bit of extra flavour.
3. Take the pan off the heat, sift in the flour into the pan and gently mix.
4. Add the eggs, one at a time, and gently mix it all together again.
5. Pour the mixture into the cake tin and bake for 20 mins.
6. After 20 mins, the cake would've started to go quite brown so cut a bit of greaseproof paper and just place it over the top of the cake just to stop it burning. Bake for another 10 mins but make sure you don't leave it in the oven for much longer than this otherwise the cake will have a horrible burnt flavour to it- it's all about timing.
7. Poke holes into the top of the cake and into the middle just to make sure it is fully cooked (there should be no cake mixture on the skewer when you pull it out). Sit on a cooling rack for 10-15mins.
8. Once cool, put a bit of honey (I also added a bit of golden syrup and lemon juice to give it a summery tang) into a pan and heat it up. Drizzle it over the cake and you're done!
9. When you serve the cake, you could dust a bit of icing sugar over it to make it seem a bit more fancy but it's completely optional.

This cake is so easy to make, yet so flavoursome. It's so perfect for summer when you've got the family round. Happy baking!