Honeycake

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010

Honey Bear by Amy CrookThis recipe started out life in the Winnie the Pooh Cookery Book and then was extensively altered from its original form as a birthday cake.

Basically, every single time I read a fantasy novel, someone is having sticky, delicious honeycakes, and I really wanted to get in on that. But I couldn’t find a recipe that sounded right, so I started with this one and altered it and altered it and messed with it until I got the dense, spiced, super sweet honeyed cake that I’d always imagined.

When this cake is baked up it’s heavy and a bit sticky, and goes wonderfully with a good cup of tea. Experiment to find the just-right baking time for you; my original recipe said 20-25 minutes, but I ended up going about 40 with the white whole wheat flour and that wasn’t quite enough. (Note: I have since had my oven fixed and get shorter baking times these days.)

  • Spices by Amy Crook1 3/4 cups white whole wheat flour (I’ve made this with alternative flours with good results, too)
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1/2 tsp ginger
  • 1/2 tsp cardamon
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/2 cup butter, softened
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 cup honey (spray measuring cup with cooking oil before adding honey for easier pouring)
  • powdered sugar and/or nutmeg, for decoration

Preheat oven to 375° F. Sift dry ingredients together. While mixing, slowly add milk, eggs, softened butter, vanilla & honey. I mixed up the milk, eggs, and vanilla, then alternated milk mixture with honey, adding in the butter somewhere in the middle. When a creamy batter has formed (mmm), pour into 1 greased 9-inch round cake pan. Bake for 20-30 minutes (watching carefully if your oven is at all like mine) or until brown around the edges, and a cake tester comes out with just crumbs and no batter goo.

Sprinkle with powdered sugar and/or nutmeg and allow to cool for 10 minutes before serving. Use stencils to create pretty patterns if you’re a big dork or Martha Stewart.

Serves 12 (or 6 if you’re like me).

Honeycake by Amy Crook

Find more like this:

Categories: Daily Art, Series and Books, Whimsical and Strange
Tags: , , , ,

« Drip divider »

4 Responses to “Honeycake”

Drip divider
  1. minnie says:

    mmmmm that sounds delish. did you use king arthur white whole wheat flour?

  2. Amy says:

    I did! Many years ago I experimented with other flours, but that one has become my favorite for this sort of thing.

    Thanks!

  3. Cecily says:

    I made this with some alterations (since I didn’t have whole wheat flour nor cardamon on hand) so I used nutmeg instead and regular unbleached flour. And it is wonderful. As a note it took my cake less 30 minutes to bake in my oven.

    Thank you for getting this recipe together. I will be making this for the holidays.

  4. Amy says:

    Oh, good to know! That’s why I put the note at the start, my oven can be kind of stroppy about things, so I didn’t want people’s cakes to burn just because mine kept needing more and more time.

    Thanks!