My Sweet Honey Cake

I don't know since when do I start collecting honey. I think probably since I heard from Emeril about Lavender honey. About how fragrant it smell. Since then I have been on a quest to try every honey that I found interesting. Funny thing is, I don't like to use it on my drink at all. I prefer just plain sugar. Once in a while only when I feel like eating a toast, I like to eat it with creamed of honey. What I like about honey is the smell. I love it so much that I have been using honey soap and honey body lotion for few years now and I always buy from L'occitane because their honey soap smell just like honey and their body cream even have the same texture as creamed of honey.

I do use honey on my cooking but never as the focal point of the food. So now it is about time for me to find a recipe that will showcase the smell of a good honey.

I do some research. I come across to some Jewish honey cake that use strong brew coffee so I think that will kind of beat my goal to showcase the honey itself. After a while I finally found a recipe that is simple yet I think it will showcase the honey's smell.

I found this recipe from a book called Apples For Jam by Tessa Kiros. I bought this book at Chapter bookstore in Singapore just because I love the cover. Now, I love the recipes too because everything that Tessa Kiros wrote are always simple and she is not lying when she said her recipes as "Recipes For Life ". I like her recipes so much until I asked my cousin to buy another one of her recipe book for me from Singapore. She also wrote 2 other books. Falling Cloudberries and Twelve: A Tuscan Cook Book.

So far I only have 2 of her books and I am thinking now to buy her third book too after I made her honey cake and other things.

When I made her Honey cake, I have one concern only. I was worry that by adding rosemary into the cake it might overpowering the honey smell. But it turn out to be not at all. I think the rosemary in fact making the honey smell even stronger.

This cake is soooo easy to make, you don't even need to use fancy mixer at all. Just a bowl and a whisk and a small saucepan and you are good to go.

I have to warn you though that this cake is really sweet and after I finish putting the icing on the cake I smell strongly of honey and butter. Not a bad perfume at all if I may say.

Honey Cake

150gr (5 1/2 oz ) butter
115 gr (4 oz / 1/2 cup ) dark brown sugar
175gr ( 7 oz / 1/2 cup ) honey
200gr ( 7 oz / 1 2/3 cups ) plain ( all-purpose ) flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 Tbs finely chopped rosemary leaves ( must be fresh!! )
2 eggs, beaten

Lemon Icing:
250gr (9 oz / 2 cups ) icing sugar ( confectioners' )
100gr ( 3 1/2 oz ) butter, softened
1 tsp grated lemon zest
2 Tbs lemon juice

Grease and line the base of a 22 cm (8 1/2 inch ) spring form tin. Put the butter; brown sugar and honey in a small saucepan and add 1 Tbs of water. Heat gently, stirring once or twice, until the butter melts and the sugar dissolves. Leave to cool for 15 minutes. Preheat the oven to 180C ( 350F / gas 4 ).

Sift the flour, baking powder and cinnamon into a bowl and add the rosemary. Add the honey mixture and eggs and beat until smooth.

Pour into the tin and bake for 35-40 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean when you poke it into the centre. Leave in the tin to cool completely.

To make the lemon icing, sift the icing sugar into a bowl. Add the butter, lemon zest and juice and 1 Tbs of water and beat until smooth. You might like to add a few more drops of lemon juice after tasting it. Spread over the top and side of the cake. The cake softens as it sits and will keep well for up to a week in a cake tin.

Cuts into 8 - 10 slices.

NOTE: If your rosemary plant has produce some of its flowers you can sprinkle some of that purple flowers on top of the cake just like the picture on the recipe book. Too bad my rosemary plant is still small. Now in Surabaya rosemary plants are for sale in almost every plants store on the road side everywhere.