Blythe’s Honey Cake

So my great friend Blythe is taking her honey to the chapel of love in August. In celebration of her fabulousness and her soon to be nuptials all the girls got together to shower her with love and best wishes. But since we were talking about the birds and the bees what could be more appropriate then a honey bee hive cake. What makes this delightful sweet is not the cake itself, but the honey lavender glaze.

The cake:

2 sticks organic unsalted butter, left out overnight

3 cups sugar bowl sugar

1 cup sour cream (full fat, full stop)

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

6 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Crank it (oven) to 325 degrees F. Pam spray (or butter for you work-harders) and flour your baking receptacle of choice and set aside. I have the cutest bee hive mold that I got Williams and Sonoma, but any cake pan will work.

In your electric mixer, cream butter and sugar together until it is a light and airy consistency maybe 5 minutes on high. So as my brother says, “drive it like you stole it.” Slow the mixers down to add the indulgent amount of os sour cream, in one glorious dollop of tart cream. Add your eggs, 1 at a time, beating after each addition. Add extracts and stir to combine. Sift flour and baking soda together and add to creamed mixture. Decant the happy concoction into your prepared pan and bake for 1 hour and 20 minutes. Cool cake in pan until it is cool enough to handle, and then turn out onto a wire rack. Cakes are like hockey players, when their hot, you can’t do anything with them, so let it cool.

Honey Lavender Glaze

½ cup of sugar bowl sugar
½ cup of honey (I love that little bear)
½ cup of filtered water
1 tablespoon of edible grade lavender

In a heavy bottomed sauce pan add all the ingredients and stir until slightly thickened and all of the sugar has melted. Maybe 3-4 minutes, but not much longer otherwise you will have a caramel, which is not necessarily bad and maybe a good idea for next time. Let it cool on the stove for a few minutes and then pass through as sieve to discard the lavender petals. Pour warm over the cake to soak in.

You don’t need to be singing “How sweet it is to be loved by you” when you are making the cake, but it kind of helps. You also don’t need a friend who is getting married; I made an extra batch to bring one into the office so we could spread the love around.

Cheers to you Blythe! Congratulations, much love, much laughter, healthy children, and happily ever after.

Mama's Brown Sugar and Sour Cream Coffee Cake

Come over here and give mama some suga... brown sugar.

Can you blame me, a girl needs a little suga. So while contemplating of deliciousness to bake up for the office, I came across a Zingerman's Gourmet Food Catalogue.

Tangent about my love affair with Zingerman's: Which by the way, if you are ever blessed enough to pass through Ann Arbor, MI, or incredibly blessed enough to live there you know what I mean. Delectables from every corner and nook in the world, a phenomenal bakery that rivals those of Europe and a deli with so much meat it would make Jewish butcher blush. Their Colossal Rubens on Marbled Rye... nuff said. Don't get me wrong University of Michigan maybe the best educational institution in the world, the football games at the Big House, awesome. But I would move their for Zingerman's, alone.

OK I'm back from my mental vacation... Yes, sour cream cake came to mind but what is in a cake without sugar? So this is what the gnomes in my kitchen decided on:

For the cake:

1 stick plus 2 teaspoons butter
1 1/2 cups packed light brown sugar (i always buy in small quantities and open a new box)
2 large eggs
2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon pour salt (not sea salt)
1 cup sour cream (full fat, none of this fancying about with skim milk bit)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract (leave the imitation's for desperate house wives)

For the crumble middle and topping:

1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Use a cooking spray to slick up a bunt pan or i am sure any oven-proof dish will do.

In my red hot, oh so sexy Kitchenade, aka my love, with the beater attachment: cream together the butter ("its so creamy its like butta") and brown sugar until light and airy. Add the eggs 1 at a time. Add the sour cream and vanilla, cinnamon, and salt. Then add the flour. Finally just as everything is coming together, add the baking powder. Pour about half the batter into the prepared baking dish of choice, spreading out to the edges of the creamy goodness.

In a separate bowl make the cinnamon and brown sugar topping, mix with a fork the sugar, flour, cinnamon, and butter, and mix until it resembles coarse crumbs. Sprinkle about half of the topping over the cake.

Then add the other half of the batter spreading with a spoonula to cover. Sprinkle all of the left over topping. And put the whole pan of sweet bliss in the oven. (Now you can lick the spoon, this batter, well lets just say i didn't want to bake it.)

Bake until golden brown and set, 35 to 40 minutes. Use the toothpick trick to make sure its done. Take the tasty cake out of the oven and let it cool on wire rack.

There you have it, a happy set of tribal leaders at the office and a day of peace and quiet for writing.

Much love and happy baking.