Healthy Recipes – Honey Cakes and Honey Coffee

26 January 2006

Lavender Honey Cakes

Bake Lavender Honey Cakes in heart shaped tins, or use muffin or Madeleine tins.

New Zealand honeysuckle (Rewarewa) honey is a light amber colour with a clean, sweet smoky flavour. Substitute any wildflower honey. If you are lucky enough to have true lavender honey, use that. Otherwise, use flowers from true English lavender, (lavendula augustifolia) for the glaze. This is the lavender most commonly used in cooking because it lacks the camphor present in all other lavenders. If using dried lavender, use one third of amount of fresh flowers.

1 cup flour
1 cup icing sugar
1 cup fine cake crumbs
1 egg
2 egg whites
120g butter, melted
Lavender honey glaze
¾ cup New Zealand honeysuckle (rewarewa) honey or any wildflower honey
2 tablespoons fresh lavender
Clotted cream to serve

METHOD
Preheat oven to 175°C. Grease 8 small cake tins. Sift flour and icing sugar into a large bowl. Mix in cake crumbs. Beat egg and whites with an electric beater until thick and pale. Fold melted butter and eggs into dry ingredients. Spoon mixture into tins and bake 12 – 15 minutes or until the centres are just set. Cool slightly before unmoulding. Serve with warm lavender honey glaze and clotted cream.
Makes 8 cakes
Lavender honey glaze: Warm honey with lavender flowers and leave to infuse for 5 minutes before serving.

Cardamom Coffee with Honey

METHOD
Brew coffee, add honey and a pinch of cardamom and whipped cream.
Deluxe version: brew coffee, add honey to taste, pour into saucepan, add cardamom seeds stripped from pod (1 pod per 2-3 cups) and heat for ten minutes without boiling. Strain into cups.
Arab coffee is heavily flavored with cardamom—sometimes to the point of having more cardamom than coffee. Some preparations use two teaspoons of cardamom seeds for each small cup of the sweet, fragrant coffee.

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