Weekend Cooking: Polish Honey Cake

For a person who doesn't particularly like honey, I seem to be cooking with it quite a bit at the moment. The most recent recipe that I have tried is a Polish Honey Cake from In Belinda's Kitchen by Belinda Jeffery. This book was chosen as the Lambs Ear Cookbook Club book of the month a couple of months ago but I hadn't yet had the opportunity to cook from it. Given that I need to return it to the library I needed to get to cook something asap!

In addition to the honey, one of the other key ingredients in this recipe is dates. This is an ingredient I haven't cooked with a lot either. The combination of the honey and dates, along with the spices was a winner, and we will definitely having this one again.

However, we didn't quite follow the serving suggestions. Last weekend I cooked this on Saturday morning thinking we would have it for dinner, but we ended up going to watch my son play basketball. It was at an odd time so we got takeaway for dinner on the way home. Then we were out for breakfast and dinner on Sunday so there was no need for cake. This meant we didn't actually try it until Monday, and then we proceeded to have it as breakfast during the week. So for us this is a Polish Honey Breakfast Cake!

There are a couple of other recipes that I do still want to try out of the book, so I might need to reborrow the book. We'll see!

It certainly looks like Max gives this book his seal of approval

Polish Honey Cake (Belinda Jeffrey)    

¼ cup (20g) flaked almonds
400g unsalted butter
1 cup (350g) honey, plus extra to drizzle
1 firmly packed cup (200g) brown sugar
3 cups (450g) plain flour
1½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
1½ tsp ground ginger
1½ tsp ground cinnamon
300g pitted dates, roughly chopped
2-3 tsp very thinly sliced glace ginger
1 egg, lightly beaten
¼ cup (60g) sour cream
½ cup (125ml) hot black tea
2 tsp vanilla extract
Thick cream or vanilla bean ice cream to serve

Preheat oven to 160º. Grease a 25cm non-stick bundt pan well, then press almonds into base and a little up the sides.

Place butter and honey in a saucepan over low heat, stirring, until the butter has melted. Stir in brown sugar.

Meanwhile, combine flour, soda, ground ginger and cinnamon in a large bowl. Add dates and glace ginger and toss to coat.

In a separate bowl, whisk the egg, sour cream, hot tea and vanilla, then whisk the egg mixture into the melted butter mixture.

Make a well in the centre of flour and pour in butter mixture. Lightly whisk to a loose batter, then pour into the prepared pan.

Bake for 50 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Cool cake in pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes, then invert onto the rack and cool completely.

Slice and serve drizzled with extra honey, with cream or ice cream.

Weekly meals

Saturday -  Takeaway

Sunday -  Out for dinner

Monday - Smoky pork chops with mash, broccoli and gravy

Tuesday - Steak with roasted baby potatoes

Wednesday - Pork Nachos

Thursday - Out for dinner

Friday - Chicken Friccasee

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