Strawberry & Honey Teacake
This cake. This CAKE! This cake I ate direct from the plate. I didn’t even cut it into slices. I had one fork and over the course of an afternoon I ploughed my way through a good third of. this. cake. It is glorious (if I dare say so myself). It tastes like springtime, it smells like the strawberry shortcake in the scratch and sniff book I was obsessed with as a child. It is heavily laced with wild honey. It is impossibly moist and light, and the honeyed cream, sandwiched between the layers of cake, is as light as a cloud.
It’s spring. Bees are everywhere, fresh strawberries abound and if you have any sense in the world you are going to make this cake, place it atop a red checked picnic rug, pop on a flouncy sundress or some kind of breezy linen suit and spend the next warm morning devouring it in the sunshine, with a bottle of dry white wine and someone you’d rather like to kiss.
Strawberry & Honey Teacake
Serves 6-8
Ingredients
2/3 cup butter (160g)
1/2 cup caster sugar
1/2 cup honey
2 eggs
2 cup self raising flour
2/3 cup milk
1/4 tsp of salt
400g strawberries, cut into quarters
For the molten honey butter
3 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp honey
For the honey cream
2 cups pouring cream
2 Tbsp honey
Method
Preheat oven to 180˚C. Grease and line two 20cm cake tins.
Beat the butter, caster sugar and honey with an electric beater until they turn pale and creamy. Add the eggs and beat until well combined.
Use a large spoon to gently stir in half the flour, then the milk, then the remaining flour and salt.
Spoon the mixture evenly into the two tins and bake for ~30-35 minutes or until golden and cooked through (to test if your cake is ready, stick a knife in the centre of the cake; if the cake is cooked through, the knife should come out clean).
Let the cakes sit for 5 minutes, then turn them out onto plates. For the molten honey butter, melt 3 Tbsp of butter and add the lemon juice and 1 tsp honey. Brush the top of each cake with the molten honey butter.
For the honey cream, whip the cream until it begins to thicken, then add the honey and whip until soft peaks form.
Once both cakes are cool, spread half of the honeyed cream on top of one of the cakes and add half of the chopped strawberries on top of the cream. Place the next cake on top of the strawberries, then top with the rest of the cream and the remaining strawberries.