Royal Green Caribbean Honey + Yeast Free Honey Cake Recipe

A couple of weeks ago I was very kindly sent a jar of the *Royal Green Organic Caribbean Honey (£4.49, 250g) from the lovely people at Eterno Naturals so it gave me an excuse to try out a recipe I hadn't attempted before. It's a bit of a strange recipe but it turned out really well! I adapted the recipe slightly from an old baking book my auntie has so I don't know specifically what the book is. The honey is gorgeous, it has a liquorice taste, in my opinion, it is quite unique and everyone who has tried it has loved it! 

Ingredients 

Cake Mix

- 90g self raising flour

- 2 or 3 teaspoons of cinnamon

- 3 eggs

- 125g soft brown sugar

Honey filling

- 125g butter

- 90g caster sugar

- 2 or 3 tablespoons of honey 

1. Preheat your oven to 210 celsius and grease or line the container your going to use. I personally used two paper cake cases which were 18x6 cm so there is less washing up! 

2. Using an electric whisk/beater, beat the eggs in a large bowl until they are thicker, frothy and paler. Then add in the soft brown sugar to the eggs gradually, whisking constantly until the mixture is now pale and glossy/shiny. 

3. Gently fold in the self raising flour until combined and spread the mixture into your two cake tin/cases. It will only look like a tiny amount of mixture and it will be a thin layer in the tins/cases but that it is how it should be. Bake for approx. 12 minutes - test with a cocktail stick to see if they are done, if the stick comes out of the cake clean then it's fully baked. Also if the cake bounces back when pressed it is done. 

4. The cakes will not rise very much, they are quite thin anyway but the filling makes the cake look thicker/bigger. Leave the cake to fully cool. Then to make the honey filling, combine the butter, caster sugar and honey into a bowl and beat together with an electric whisk/beater until light and fluffy. You can then spread it on one sponge then place the other on top to make the cake - like a victoria sponge style cake without the jam. 

However, the recipe states to add a layer of water covering the butter/sugar/honey mixture then swirl the water around and drain off. You then do this about seven times to dissolve the sugar which is what I did but it just made the filling have a gelatinous/jelly like texture which I didn't really like so I would just stick to a normal buttercream filling as with step 4. 

The end result looked pretty good, in my opinion, especially as it's the first cake I've made by myself and I hadn't used this recipe before. The recipe is very quick and easy so I would recommend it for first time cake makers such as myself. All of my dads colleges loved the cake, and my dad did too and he's not a cake person. You can adapt this recipe with more or less cinnamon, more or less honey and you could even add a brushing of honey, orange zest, lemon zest or coconut to the top of the cake. I will definitely use this recipe again however I would just make the normal buttercream filling rather than adding and draining water which I would not recommend unless you want the filling to be slightly gelatinous in texture. 

Have you tried this honey? Will you be making this cake? Do you have any favourite recipes including honey?