Honey Cake Mark II

As my parents had returned from Norway and Iceland, it was back to stealth-baking for me, which can really only be done when they are both at work. Alas, this means that my baking is limited to two days a week. Still, I make a go of it.

I wanted to have a go at making a different honey cake this time, having had the urge for some for a while. I absolutely adore honey, so this was the perfect type of cake for me to make. I had made the Martha Kearney Hive Cake before, but wanted to try making a honey cake, rather than one that included lemon as well.

So yet again I turned to the BBC Food website, and typed in the words: "honey cake". The first result that came up was this James Martin recipe, and it seemed nice enough, so that's the one I went for.

The ingredients needed for the cake are:

• 170g/6oz clear honey 
• 140g/5oz unsalted butter 
• 85g/3oz light muscovado sugar 
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 200g/7oz plain flour, sieved
• 2 1/4 tsp baking powder
• water

And for the icing:

• 55g/2oz icing sugar 
• 1 tbsp clear honey 
• hot water

The BBC recipe calls for the use of self-raising flour, but I didn't have any in, and I prefer to use plain flour and baking powder anyway. So I simply added some baking powder to the 200g of plain flour.

So first I lined a cake tin with baking paper (being fed up with the number of times that I haven't greased the tin enough and have had to scrape cake off the tin base), and set the oven to 180C (350F/Gas Mark 3).

I then put the butter, honey and sugar, with a tablespoon of water, into the large saucepan and melted it slowly over a low heat.

Looks weird, but smells amazing.

Once melted, I then removed the pan from the heat, and mixed in the beaten eggs and the flour and baking powder, using a hand-held electric whisk.

Beaten eggs, and flour and baking powder.

The mixture was then poured and spooned out into the lined cake tin, and was then put in the oven for 40 minutes.

Looking good so far.

Once the cake had cooled down slightly, but was still very warm, I mixed up the icing sugar with the honey and hot water, and poured it over the cake.

Mmmmmm.

Once the cake had cooled a bit more, and the icing had set a little, I removed the cake from the tin and set it to rest on a cooling rack.

It smells really, really good at this stage.

As soon as I could, I cut myself a slice. As I said, I absolutely love honey, so this cake was heaven to me.It tasted purely of beautiful honey, and the combination of the honey sponge and the honey icing was not too much for me, although I could see how it would be for other people. Case in point, my mother hated this cake, and my father wouldn't even try it (he doesn't like honey). I'm used to this anyway, plus it meant more cake for me, so I wasn't too upset by this. I made this cake three days ago, and there is only a quarter of it left. It's provided me with a very nice breakfast!

Glorious cake!

Beckie.