The first recipe for Tuesday with Dorie BCM this month is Spiced Honey Cake. This is an unusual cake, flavoured with a syrup infused with peppercorns, orange zest, lavender and ginger rather than your traditional heavy Christmas spices.
When I went to make the cake, I realised that I had tossed out my dried lavender, so I used lavender and strawberry jam (which tastes disgustingly floral!) instead. I also realised that I didn't have fresh ginger, so I just used crushed ginger from a tube. Dried cherries are quite difficult to source here and are very expensive, so I used dried cranberries instead.
The resulting cake is quite pretty and festive, and not at all what I thought it might be like:
I was expecting a heavy, brown, treacly looking cake; this cake is light and golden.
Dorie recommends that the cake sits undisturbed for a day or two to allow the flavours to develop. After about half a day, I can say that you can definitely taste the flavours, especially the lavender. The cake is on the dry side, so I think the suggestion to dunk it is a good one. It might also be good served toasted for breakfast, if you like that sort of thing. (It is not really done here in Australia.)
To see what the other Dorie bakers made this week and what they thought of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.
Sounds like a really interesting cake although I find it hard to convince hubby to try drier style cakes, even with coffee.
ReplyDeleteI think it looks absolutely beautiful and delicious! Very nice.
ReplyDeleteSounds like an interesting cake but not for breakfast - nice to hear you say that Aussies don't do that, as I am often amazed at what is suggested as breakfast food because you would never do it here!
ReplyDeleteYou are right. When I inagined this,I thought of the same thing you did! It looks lovely though, and I hope it was as tasty.
ReplyDeleteI have not eaten my second cake, don't know whether it tastes better after a day. To me, the bigger issue is the dryness as you mentioned.
ReplyDeleteYour cake looks lovely! This cake is indeed a little dry!
ReplyDeleteThis sounds much more to my tastes than traditional Christmas cake. I love the sound of all the spices and flavours.
ReplyDeleteYour cake came out looking so good. I was also expecting something very moist, a bit like fruitcake but I guess it's the opposite in fact.
ReplyDeleteMy cake is still dry after a day. I am glad that I did not have any lavender, it sounds too floral. It looks pretty though.
ReplyDeleteYour cake looks perfect. It's unfortunate the texture was a little dry.
ReplyDeleteHmmm. One reason I didn't bake this cake this week is that I didn't have a lot of the ingredients. I think I'll take a page from your book and make substitutions.
ReplyDeleteThat is one lovely cake. I guess I quite BCM way too soon but we didn't need all those lovely treats. And we have ton's of dried cherries here.
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