An Easy Honey Cake Recipe

Sweet and honey-scented, this delicious Honey Cake recipe is definitely one to try. It’s a brilliant cake for tea times or at the end of a meal. It’s moist, fluffy, very easy and quick to make and the flavour changes subtly depending on the honey that you use.

I wanted to share this simple Honey cake recipe with you as it is a really beautiful, understated kind of cake that goes perfectly with a cup of tea or coffee. It’s a traybake so it slices up easily into nicely sized portions making it a great cake to share at any get-togethers and it fits easily into lunchboxes. Like a lot of the recipes I like to share, it is simple, not overly complicated to make and versatile.

Why you want this cake recipe

Maybe you’re like me and just love cake but there are a few reasons why you might want to try this cake recipe.

• it’s subtly flavoured and takes on the taste of the honey that you’ve used. This makes it slightly different each time.
• It’s sweet, as you’d expect, but the presence of lemon prevents it from being too sweet. There’s a nice balance of flavours.
• The cake is made in a square tin making it easy to portion out and it fits easily into lunch boxes.
• The flavour and texture improve for a few days after it is first made. So, this is a cake that won’t go stale and dry the day after it is baked.
• It’s quite a simple but elegantly impressive cake to make when you don’t have a lot of time.
• The sprinkle of flaked almonds across the top makes a simple, understated decoration.
• A big plus is that you don’t need masses of cake-making experience to be successful with this recipe.

Ingredients for the Honey Cake

Everything on this list is likely to already be in your pantry. Nothing too exotic.

1. Flour and baking powder – plain flour with added baking powder. Gives the cake a nice texture and controls the rise.
2. Honey – this sweetens the cake and gives it its unmistakable honey flavour. Choose good honey if you can. I like to buy mine from a local beekeeper where I know the bees are cared for. Also, the honey is quite lovely with the flavour changing through the season as the bees forage on different flowers.
3. Sugar – again this sweetens the cake and if that seems a lot with the honey. The honey’s main job is to flavour the cake.
4. Eggs – bind everything together and help the cake rise.
5. Butter – contributes to the flavour and to holding everything together. You may substitute a suitable baking margarine if you want to.
6. Lemon juice and vanilla extract – both are acting here as flavour enhancers and the lemon prevent the honey flavour from being overpowering. Everything is balanced.
7. Flaked almonds – to sprinkle across the surface. These make a nice decoration on an otherwise plain-looking cake.

How to make this Honey Cake recipe

• Line or grease a 20cm by 20cm (8 inches by 8 inches) square cake tin. I prefer to line my tins so that I can be confident of getting them out in one beautiful piece.
• Gather up your ingredients. You are going to need two bowls, one to melt the honey sugar and butter in and the other to add the flour. You will also need something to crack the eggs into with enough space in it to be able to beat them together.

Making the honey cake

• Preheat your oven to 360F/180C/160C fan
• Melt the honey, butter and sugar together in a large, microwave-proof bowl, do this using 15-second blasts of power. You may use a saucepan for this if you prefer. Do not let the mixture boil. Give it a good stir to combine everything. Set this hot liquid somewhere safely to the side whilst you get on with the rest of the cake. Allow this syrupy mixture to cool a little.
• Beat the eggs together.
• Measure the flour and baking powder into a bowl and stir the baking powder through the flour.
• Add the lemon juice and the vanilla extract to the cooled honey, butter, and sugar syrup and stir it to combine.
• Pour this mixture into the flour and add the beaten eggs. Stir gently to combine. It may look a little lumpy at this stage but stir a little longer and it begins to make a nice smooth batter.
• Tip the batter into the lined cake tin and sprinkle with the handful of flaked almonds.

Baking the cake

• Pop this into the preheated oven to bake.
• After 20 minutes check to see if the honey cake is done. Insert a skewer in the centre and if it is perfectly clean when you remove it, the cake is done. If there is still batter attached to the skewer give the cake a few more minutes to bake. Check every 5 minutes to ensure that it doesn’t overcook.
• Allow the cake to cook for 5 to 10 minutes before removing it from the tin and then allowing it to finish cooling.
• You can now slice the cake into evenly sized pieces or slice it when you want a piece. It is your choice.

Tips for Success

Here are a few tips for making this Honey Cake recipe a favourite family cake in your home.

• Measure your ingredients accurately. I agree that a lot of recipes work really well with measuring cups and spoons. But when you’re baking cakes even the smallest error with ingredient amounts can spoil the cake. Treat yourself to a digital scale.
• Oven temperature – Set your oven temperature carefully, better still get an oven thermometer and check that your oven is at the correct temperature. A great many domestic ovens deviate by a few degrees here and there and it can cause havoc with your baking.
• At the end of the baking time check carefully that your cake is cooked through. Use a skewer or toothpick and ensure that when you pierce the cake that there is no cake batter attached to it. If there is, you need to carefully time a further 3 to 5 minutes of extra baking and then test again. Keep doing this until your cake has cooked through.
• In this particular recipe, it is important the hot melted butter syrup is given a few minutes to cool before being added to the flour along with the beaten eggs. If the syrup is too hot you risk scrambling the eggs which you don’t want to do.
• Allow the honey cake a few minutes in the tin on a cooling rack before you remove it. Then allow the cake to completely cool before cutting it into portions. It can be a little delicate until it is cool.

Serving the Cake

This gorgeous Honey cake doesn’t need anything fancy to be delicious. If you really want to serve it with anything then a spoon of Greek yoghurt would suit these gentle flavours very well. Otherwise, all you need if a cup of tea or coffee to enjoy it with.

Storing the Honey Cake

This cake lasts well for 4 – 5 days as long as it is covered, either in a cake tin or with cling film. It is the kind of cake that improves after it has been baked, each day the flavour seems to develop a little more. It stays quite moist until about the 5th day when it becomes a little dry. A good cake to have in the house.

If you like this then you may like….

• Castella Cake
• Banana and Date Loaf Cake
• Rock Cakes
• Chocolate Lava Cake
• Blueberry Crumble
• Easy Vegan Blueberry muffins
• Blueberry Orange Muffins
• Double Chocolate Chip Muffins
• How to Make a Courgette Cake
• How to make Blueberry and Apple Crumble

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