A few weeks ago Derby Clandestine Cake Club‘s August meeting was held, with a ‘Hidden Summer’ theme. A bit unsure of adding extra ingredients to a gluten free cake, I opted for a hidden-centred cake instead. I found the honey cake recipe and things spiralled out from there… a beehive shape, honeycomb centre, perfect!
The gluten-free honey cake recipe I used was this one from Glutafin – and I simply can’t rave about it enough. It was so easy to make (hello, one-bowl baking), cooked perfectly, and was wonderfully moist and tasty. Gold stars all round!
I baked the cake in two slightly different size round tins, to start the circles needed for the beehive.
Once cool, I used various circular elements from round the kitchen (a bowl, a glass, and a spray oil lid for the smallest one!), to cut concentric circles out from the middles of the large cakes. I ended up with three ‘rings’ of cakes on the bottom (circles with holes in the middle), and two ‘solid’ circle layers for the top.
Once I was happy with the stacking, I dis-assembled down to the bottom two layers, and filled them with a generous mix of chocolate and honeycomb pieces (I highly recommend Crunchie Rocks – a ready-made version of this!)
Finally I needed to stick the cakes together, and cover with icing. The sticking part didn’t take much icing at all as the cake was so moist, but I more than made up for it with lots of sticky icing on the outside. I’d love to share the recipe for this as it worked perfectly, but alas it was one of those throw-in-the-pan-and-see-what-happens kind of icings, with some honey, butter, icing sugar, a little chocolate… you get the picture!
Once the cake was covered I added some bee-hive ‘ridges’ round the cake, using the back of a fork.
And what beehive would be complete without some little honeybees? Wondering where their honey has gone no doubt! I rolled together some black and yellow fondant icing, adding white wings and black dots for eyes, to make these little bee-hive keepers.
The finished cake – stickly hiding its hidden chocolatey treasure away…
… only to spill out in a grand reveal when the cake is cut open!
Needless to say there was neither much cake nor chocolate left by the time cake club was over. You can read the full details of our August meeting here. Next stop is our September meeting to launch the new Clandestine Cook Book – featuring a recipe from little moi! All will be revealed soon…