Bella’s Honey Cake

It’s Been A While…

Somewhere the last bits of summer evaporated with the flip of a switch, and it’s now full-on fall. I’ve been wearing cozy sweaters, added an extra blanket to my bed at night, and still find myself surprised to look out the window at 7:45pm to find total darkness.

Time has moved faster than I can keep up with it the last month which explains the quiet in this corner of my world. A big change happened at work that threw life upside down there, new school years started, plus I catered a best friend’s momentous birthday party (if you’re curious to see what I cooked, there’s a story saved in my Instagram highlights titled “BFF Bday”).

And then there was the kitchen renovation. It was a whirlwind of three weeks, feeling displaced. For those who’ve lived through a kitchen renovation, you know three weeks is nothing. I will share more details on that soon because I know many of you are curious about it.

I’m hoping the last two days of slower-paced living thanks to the Rosh Hashanah holiday is a momentum I can hold onto, but also feeling anxious about turning Slack on and diving back into work. I’ve been searching for balance for so long, I’m not sure if my idea of it is even achievable anymore. A good start will be closing my work laptop at a set time every day. 

Bella wasn’t able to be home for Rosh Hashanah but that didn’t stop me from making one of her favorite cakes. I originally shared the recipe back in 2017, and made two tweaks to it last weekend when I baked it to celebrate Rosh Hashanah.

Isabella loves carrot cake, and a lot of the ingredients here remind me of what you’d use for carrot cake, so I decided to replace half of the grated apple with carrots. Truthfully, you can’t even taste the carrot, and one can argue why include it at all but I know it’s there, and why it’s there, and maybe that’s all that really mattered for me. If you find yourself without carrots, don’t make a special trip to the store and just double up the apple amount in the recipe, making the recipe as originally intended.

The other change I made was the kind of cake tin I used. Normally I use a round pan but wanted something that looked extra special, so I used a decorative copper tin. Due to the nature of the shape, the cake took a long time to bake–almost 80 minutes, and I had to cover the top loosely with foil to ensure it didn’t burn. I mention this as a reminder that changing the size and shape of a baking tin as directed in a recipe will affect the baking time, so something to tuck away in your mind for future bakes.

I also tried out cake goop for the first time, and will admit I may be a convert. I’ve always coated finicky shaped tins with butter and dusted with flour, and never had a problem with cake sticking (the trick  is using a pastry brush to get softened butter into every crevice of the pan). Still, I was curious when Benjamin The Baker’s cake goop popped up in my Instagram feed last week, and figured the tin I used here was the perfect time to give it a try.

The goop is a mixture of softened butter, oil and flour, and worked even better than I’d imagined. The downside is since it has butter, it needs to be refrigerated and will likely need some softening before using the next time. I’ve seen some cake goop recipes that use shortening instead of butter which would make it shelf stable. Has anyone ever tried a variation like that?

Hope the week has been a gentle one, and the rest of it unfolds peacefully. Remember to be kind. –xo, j.

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