Honey Beehive cake

Here's a sweet cake (rather poorly decorated I admit....) that you could even make for your 'honey' on Valentine's Day!

I actually made this to take to a friend's house recently; it was the first time I had visited her new home and didn't want to go empty handed. She isn't one for eating a lot of sugar so I knew whatever I made couldn't have a lot of frosting. This cake is perfect as some of the sweetness comes from honey. I also wanted to try out a new silicon baking mould my boyfriend gave me for Christmas, so when I saw a recipe for honey cake - even though the cake in the picture was cut into cubes - I decided it would be perfect to use my new mould.

The cake recipe is adapted slightly from Marian Keyes' Saved By Cake.

You need:

5 eggs, separated

100g caster sugar

100ml oil

100ml honey

200g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

50g chopped mixed nuts

Preheat the oven to 180C. Separate the eggs and beat the yolks with the sugar, then add the oil and honey



Then add the flour and baking powder

Finally add the nuts

Whisk the egg whites in a separate bowl until stiff, then fold into the cake mix

Here's the silicon baking mould - to make a three dimensional beehive! It came from Betterware and I was really excited about using it.

Unfortunately silicon moulds are very floppy! I overfilled the mould - because this recipe was intended for a full size cake tin and the moulds are actually relatively small. It was OK until I tried to pick it up by holding each end of the mould - it sagged in the middle and all the mixture ran into the centre! I cleaned it up and tried again, and this time stood the mould in a small baking tray so I could pick up the baking tray rather than the mould to put it in the oven.

Strangely, the cake was browning on the top and still uncooked in the middle, so I'm really not sure what the best time or temperature would be for this.

Another problem I found was that because the moulds weren't rigid, they didn't entirely hold their shape in the oven, and the two cakes came out slightly differently. The idea is to sandwich the two halves together to make a three-dimensional beehive, so it isn't great if the two pieces aren't exactly the same size and shape.

In the end one half of the cake was still a little undercooked - this cake didn't turn out particularly well in the end, though it did taste great - you could really taste the honey.

I decided to just decorate one half, and as I had to transport this in an overnight bag into work and then on the train to my friend's house, I didn't want to cover it with buttercream. I decorated it with marzipan, and made some strips following the design of the cake mould. I also made some little bees,  again from marzipan, using flaked almonds for the wings. The stripes are drawn on with chocolate piping icing,

This is a very versatile cake that you could make for any occasion- even Valentine's day as there's no rule to say that you have to stick to hearts and chocolate! And this cake would be a good way to say "honey, I love you"!

So I am sending this to Homemade by Fleur's  Virtual Valentine Bake Off.

For the same reason I am sending this to Calendar Cakes, hosted by Laura at Laura Loves Cakes and Rachel at DollyBakes, as their theme this month is Valentine's Day.