Honey Cake

I wanted to stop by and wish you all a Shana Tova! We're inching closer to Yom Kippur and I hope that every one of you will be written in the Book Life, with health, happiness and success. I love this time of year with the chaos and joy of the holidays, as weighty as they may be. Yes, we're being judged, but I look forward to the flashes of introspection I squeeze into my hectic routine. Many changes, new goals, and unexpected opportunities await. I'm trying to keep my aspirations short and realistic, but I'm a hopeless idealist and so the lengthy laundry list is getting constant additions, edits and scribbles. Blogging and photographing more is definitely on there, right with time management skills, exercise, printing pictures, and having a pinterest-esque stocked freezer full of dinners. There are some lofty, spiritual goals sprinkled in and of course conflicting ones like going to sleep early, but overall, I have a plan to tackle the new year. Ironically, it's a mere copy of last year's, a fact I find amusing. The cliche is true: some things never change. Alas, I'll focus on the little victories, try to be more present and mindful and grateful. I think things will fall into place.

Let's talk about more important matters like this honey cake I made for Rosh Hashana. It's delicate and sweet with a pronounced honey taste. I pulled this recipe from the Monday Morning Cooking Club, a cookbook by a group of ladies from Australia. I've cooked from this book a few times in the past year or so that I've had it. It is truly lovely. Firstly, it's written with some Australian terms like castor sugar, cake tin, and mum, which categorizes it as a tinge exotic and lets me practice my British/Australian accent. Yes, blasphemous--I  grouped the British with Australians, to my unaccustomed ear they sound the same and I love them both. I digress. Secondly, the book carries a beautiful message of how food unites the past and the present, it's at the basis of this sisterhood and propels memories old and new. There are many traditional recipes and some modern ones, each one comes with an interesting blurb of the recipe's history. I'll talk more about it when I post the Couscous Roast Chicken I made from it. For now let's get back to cake, and honey, and the new year. May this year be as sweet as honey and infinitely fulfilling.

Gina's Hair-Raising Honey Cake
adapted from The Monday Morning Cooking Club

25g (1/4 cup) dry breadcrumbs
375 ml (1 1/2 cups) hot tap water

dry mixture:
225g (1 1/2 cups) plain flour (I used all-purpose)
225g (1 1/2 cups) self-raising flour
1 1/2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
40g (1/3 cup) cocoa powder (I omitted)

wet mixture:
4 eggs
345g (1 1/2 cups) caster sugar (powdered sugar; I reduced to 1/2 cup)
185ml (3/4 cup) vegetable oil (I used olive oil)
500g honey
dash of vanilla extract


Preheat oven to 180C (350F). Grease a large 26cm x 10cm deep angel cake tin (I used a bundt pan). Sprinkle the base and sides with breadcrumbs, tipping out any excess.
For the dry mixture, sift the ingredients together into a bowl. For the wet mixture, in a separate bowl, mix together until well combined. Mix the dry mixture into the wet mixture, alternating with hot water. Pour into the cake tin and bake for 1 hour, or until a skewer inserted in the cake comes out clean. Allow the cake to cool before turning out of the tin.