Honey cake with nuts is a cake familiar from childhood. Previously, it was baked for the New Year, and for these purposes a special recipe, developed over time, was used. Nowadays such a treat is very often prepared for children's parties. Honey cake is very often found in restaurant menus and on the shelves of confectionery stores. But the most delicious treat is, of course, prepared with your own hands. Each housewife has her own “signature” way of preparing honey cake, but the technique and basic composition of the products remain common to most recipes.
Honey cake with nuts is good because it is prepared from the most affordable products. To prepare the cake, you can safely use candied old honey. It will still need to be melted, since it is needed only for the aroma and honey taste, and not for its benefits. The most important condition is that the honey is natural and has never been heated before. The taste of the cake may vary depending on the type of honey used. So, for example, buckwheat or acacia can make the taste of the treat more intense. The cream for honey cake with nuts can be anything. You can make cream with condensed milk and butter, with sugar and eggs, with sour cream, etc. Raisins are sometimes added to the cake dough, but this option is not suitable for those who like too sweet baked goods.
So how can you bake a delicious honey cake at home ? First of all, you need to master a method often used by housewives in cooking, such as a water bath. Melt butter with honey and sugar on it. The mixture should have a homogeneous semi-liquid consistency. Honey cake with nuts consists of several cake layers, each cake is baked separately in the oven. To make the baked goods soft, the cakes need to be slightly underbaked - this is one of the secrets of a delicious honey cake. Honey cake with nuts comes in different types: with custard, with condensed milk, with chocolate filling, etc. Show your imagination and decorate the treat to your own taste, the main thing is to stick to the standard recipe. By the way, if you don’t want the cake to turn out too sugary, you can make a honey cake with sour cream.
We recommend: Quick “Anthill” for the New Year
The cake preparation time is about 1.5 hours.
How to make “Honey Cake with Nuts”
Prepare all the necessary ingredients to make honey nut cake. Remove the eggs from the refrigerator in advance so that they are at room temperature. This will make the sponge cake fluffier.
Separate the eggs into yolks and whites. Place the egg whites in a mixer bowl and beat at medium speed until soft peaks form.
Continuing to beat the whites, slowly add sugar and beat until fluffy.
While whisking, add liquid honey.
Add the yolks and beat until smooth.
Mix the flour with baking powder and sift the mixture through a fine sieve twice, add it to the bowl with the whipped mixture. Gently stir until the dough is homogeneous.
Grease a baking dish with a diameter of 24 centimeters with vegetable oil, sprinkle with flour or line the bottom and sides with baking paper. Transfer the dough into it and smooth it out.
Place the pan with the dough in a hot oven and bake for 40-45 minutes at 180 degrees until done. Remove the cake from the oven and turn the cake pan upside down until it cools completely. Remove the cooled biscuit from the mold, wrap it in film and set aside for 8 hours to mature.
Cut the biscuit into three equal layers.
For the mascarpone cream, whisk a little until smooth. Continuing to beat, gradually add condensed milk and vanilla. Beat until thick and fluffy.
Apply some of the cream to the bottom layer and smooth it out.
Set aside the most beautiful nuts for decoration and the second layer, chop the rest into coarse crumbs. Sprinkle some of the nut crumbs over the top of the cream.
Lay out the middle cake layer and also apply the cream. Place whole nuts in a circle, sprinkle the rest of the space with chopped nuts.
Place the top crust. Cover the top and sides with the remaining cream and smooth it out. Sprinkle the sides tightly with the remaining nuts.
For the distinctive design, I used clear, bubble wrap for packaging. Place bubbles on top of the cream and press down a little. Place the cake in the refrigerator for 8 hours to soak.
Decorate the finished honey cake with the reserved nuts.
Bon appetit!
Honey cake with nuts
I have repeatedly told you how to make honey choux pastry in previous recipes, so now I will repeat it briefly. Place butter, honey and sugar in a cast iron or thick-walled saucepan and heat over low heat, stirring so as not to burn, until dissolved. At this time, in a separate bowl, whisk the eggs and soda. When the sugar, honey and butter melt, pour in the beaten eggs, stirring continuously. As soon as the mixture foams and begins to rise, remove from heat and begin to stir in the sifted flour. Add salt. The dough should not be sticky, but soft enough to roll out easily. The amount of flour can vary up or down. At the same stage, I wanted to add chopped nuts to the dough, but I forgot. However, the cakes turned out with nuts, I’ll tell you how later :)
Divide the dough into 8 parts. That’s when I remembered the nuts and tried mixing them into each piece of dough separately. But this turned out to be not very convenient. Then I came up with another option: having rolled out the cake almost to the desired thickness, sprinkled nuts on top and rolled it out a little more. It turned out exactly what we needed!
It is convenient to roll out honey cakes on a sheet of parchment lightly sprinkled with flour, and then transfer them with the same parchment to a baking sheet. When rolling, we try on a template for the cake, according to which you will cut it after baking. I use a saucepan lid. While you are rolling out, the oven is preheating to 200C. We put the first cake there and immediately roll out the second one. When the first one is baked, take it out and immediately, while it is hot, cut it according to the template (because the cake will break when it cools down).
We put the finished cakes on a plate, and the scraps in a plate; they will be useful for crumbs to decorate the cake.
When all the cakes are ready, it's time to make the cream and icing. For the cream, beat the sour cream with powdered sugar - it doesn’t matter with a whisk, mixer or just a spoon, just mix well.
For the glaze, mix cocoa and sugar in a saucepan, add milk and heat over low heat until boiling. Remove from heat, cool until warm.
Let's start assembling the cake! Spread the bottom cake with sour cream. And sprinkle with nuts. To make it tasty and quick, and to ensure that the nuts don’t get stuck in your teeth, we do this: take pieces of peeled nuts and use a knife to cut them into thin slices directly into the cream. This is Alena's know-how. Indeed, much easier than making nut crumbs with a rolling pin.
Spread the next cake layer with chocolate glaze; if desired, you can also sprinkle with nuts.
I spread the top cake with a mixture of sour cream and chocolate, resulting in beautiful beige patterns.
Grease the sides of the cake with sour cream and sprinkle with crumbs (from crushed cake scraps). Decorate the cake with crumbs and nuts.
The honey cake needs to sit and soak for at least a couple of hours, and ideally until the morning, then it becomes tastier!
Cooking process:
- Place butter (or margarine) in a deep bowl and melt in a water bath. Once the butter has melted, add sugar and honey. Warm the mixture over moderate heat, stirring occasionally. The result should be a homogeneous honey-oil mixture.
- Next, add baking powder (or soda on the tip of a knife) to it. Continue heating the mixture, stirring, until it turns white and increases in volume. Remove the bowl from the stove and leave to cool.
- Break the eggs into the mixture and beat thoroughly. Add flour, knead soft elastic dough. Add chopped walnut kernels (pre-fried in a dry frying pan). Divide the dough into eight parts, roll them into cakes.
- If the dough turns out to be too soft and it’s difficult to roll it out with a rolling pin, you can put it in a greased pan and gently spread it along the bottom with your fingers. The cakes are baked at 180 degrees for 6-10 minutes. The cakes should be removed while they are not yet completely hardened - they should remain quite soft.
- While the cakes are cooling, make the cream. To do this, soften the butter and beat with a mixer until a homogeneous mass is formed. Then, without ceasing to beat, add boiled condensed milk to the butter and continue to beat until a fluffy consistency is obtained.
- Place the finished cooled cakes in a stack and trim off the uneven edges. Coat each cake with cream, also cover the sides with cream. Sprinkle the cake with chopped nuts or chocolate chips. Place the cake in the refrigerator to soak (ideally overnight).
If you are preparing a honey cake for a festive table, take care of an interesting design. You can use any nuts, grated chocolate or chocolate figures, candies, berries, some fruits, etc. for decoration. If you don’t have time to prepare a honey cake, buy ready-made honey cakes. In this case, all that remains is to prepare the cream, coat each cake with it and leave the cake to soak for several hours.
We recommend: Chocolate Log Christmas Cake
Even a novice housewife can handle making a honey cake with nuts. If you follow the presented recipe, the end result will be a delicious treat. Lush cakes, delicate cream and an amazing combination of nuts and honey will not leave indifferent even those who do not have a sweet tooth.
