Lemon, Walnuts, Cinnamon, Oh My. Greek Honey Cake Is A Delectable Surprise.
Greek honey cake. If you read those three words, this recipe might sound simple, one-note in flavor. But what if I told you it entailed honey (obviously), lemon, toasted walnuts, cinnamon, and pistachios, all enclosed in sweet, syrupy goodness?
This Greek honey lemon walnut cake — what a mouthful — is of a delicate and moist texture and brims full of the flavors of baklava. Its base is a creamed batter with lemon zest, toasted walnuts, and cinnamon added in. Once the batter has been baked off to golden doneness, the cooled cake is pierced with a skewer and doused in a honey syrup. Reserving some of the honey syrup aside to coat toasted walnuts and pistachios and then spreading the nuts all over the cake makes for a picturesque topping.
The finished result: a cake that screams honey as much as it exudes fragrant citrus and a wonderful earthy nuttiness.
If that description doesn’t make you want to try this cake, I don’t know what will. I tried it just recently and absolutely loved it. Now for a few notes on the recipe:
· Feel free to add more cinnamon if you’d like a more pronounced flavor, as cinnamon tends to lie in the background to amplify other stronger flavors. You can also substitute the orange zest for lemon as I did, and be a little generous with it for an extra citrusy zing
· Toasted walnuts add so much more flavor — toast your walnuts, pecans, almonds, pistachios, etc. at 350 degrees for 5–8 minutes (watch them well, they burn easily!)
· I chose to add a topping of toasted walnuts and pistachios, soaking them in some reserved honey syrup and then pressing them onto the cake to ensure that they stuck to its surface
· I’d halve the honey syrup: 1/2 c. sugar, 1/2 c. honey, 6 tbsps of water, and 1/2 tsp lemon juice makes for the perfect amount if you like a nicely syruped cake that’s not too sweet
· This cake is quite sticky, as you can probably tell, so make sure to line your cake pan really, really well. I would recommend using a square pan so you can easily hang parchment paper off the pan’s sides to lift the cake out (and then you can cut the cake into classic Greek diamond shapes!). Note that I chose to bake my cake in a 9-inch round, which led to a fair amount of stickage. Although, this did result in some scraps for me to taste, so it wasn’t a total loss
· When cutting this cake, bigger slices are better to avoid it crumbling into pieces as it has an extremely delicate crumb. To make this easier, you can also score your cake into slices before pouring the syrup over instead of poking holes with a skewer
Now that that’s out of the way, get baking with Jan’s recipe on Allrecipes — the only step missing is the addition of a nut topping coated in a little reserved syrup (I was inspired by The Mediterranean Dish’s honey cake recipe!).
