Spiced honey and raspberry cake

I was sitting on my couch one Saturday morning, surrounded by cookbooks, trying to decide what to bake for the weekend (I told you I usually plan ahead, but that sometimes that doesn’t work), when Nigel Slater showed up on my TV screen preparing a beautiful, luscious cake, made with plums – I instantly knew what to bake that day. :)

I did not have any plums around (or anything fresh, for that matter), therefore I decided to use raspberries instead. I wasn’t too happy with the copious amount of golden syrup used in the cake – here in Brazil I can’t find the ingredient and have always replaced it with corn syrup, but since I’ve been trying to ban that ingredient from my pantry I went with honey, instead – 200g of it.

The cake turned out moist and delicious, similar to gingerbread in both texture and flavor and with the sour hit of the berries making everything more interesting – thank you, Nigel, for making my Saturday so much more flavorsome and perfumed.

Spiced honey and raspberry cake
slightly adapted from the stunning Tender, Volume 2: A Cook's Guide to the Fruit Garden

200g honey
125g unsalted butter
125g brown sugar
250g all purpose flour
1 lightly heaped teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 lightly heaped teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 lightly heaped teaspoon ground ginger
pinch of salt
2 large eggs
240ml whole milk, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
250g frozen raspberries, unthawed

Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F. Lightly butter a 23cm (9in) cake pan, line the bottom with a circle of baking paper and butter the paper as well.
Warm honey and butter very gently in a pan until the butter melts. Stir in the brown sugar. Set aside and allow to cool slightly.
Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger and salt into a bowl. Add the honey mixture and stir to combine. Add the eggs, milk and vanilla and whisk until you get a smooth batter. Pour into the prepared pan, then sprinkle with the berries. Bake for about 45 minutes or until golden and risen and a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean.
Cool completely in the pan over a wire rack. Carefully unmold, peel off the paper and transfer to a serving plate.

Serves 8-10