Honey Soaked Lemon Cake

I’ve been dreaming about making lemon cakes for almost two weeks now. While it’s normal for me to dream about cooking and baking, I don’t usually dream about making the same thing every night for a two week period.

Yesterday, Kemal bought me a cake pan mold which makes little individual torte-shaped cakes like what you see here:

They’re just so darned cute, and they taste oh-so-lemony. You can make the cake in any kind of cake pan…doesn’t have to be a molded one like this what we used.

You can also make the glaze sweeter. While we really like the cake just as it is, Kemal and I both think the glaze could maybe be a bit sweeter. Next time we might make our glaze with some sugar added to the honey and water.

Honey Soaked Lemon Cake (Adapted from: www.recipesource.com)

Ingredients for the cake:

• 1/2 cup softened butter
• 1 1/4 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 3/4 cups honey
• 1/2 cups milk
• 2 3/4 cups flour
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• grated lemon peel and the pulp from 5 lemons

Ingredients for the glaze:

• 1/2 cup honey
• 1 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice from the 5 lemons whose pulp and peel were used in the cake

Instructions for making the cake:

• Set the butter out to get soft.
• Grate the lemon peel off 5 lemons.
• Place the lemon peel in a small mixing bowl and add 1/4 cup sugar. Mix well with your hands, and then set it aside.
• Squeeze the juice out of all the lemons, removing any seeds. Set the lemon juice aside.
• Remove the pulp from the squeezed lemons and set aside.
• Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
• Grease and flour your baking pan.
• With a mixer, cream the butter, eggs, honey, and 1 cup of sugar.
• Add the milk, lemon pulp, sugared lemon peel, flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Mix until all ingredients are incorporated.
• Pour the batter into the greased pan and bake until the cake is golden brown. You’ll know it’s done when you insert a toothpick and it comes out clean.

Instructions for making the glaze:

• Warm the honey and lemon juice on low heat.
• After the cake cools slightly, remove it from the baking pan and onto your serving plate.
• Poke holes in the cake with a fork.
• Take a spoon and pour the glaze over the cake.
• Let it cool, and then if you like, you can sprinkle it with powdered sugar.