How cute is this rustic caramel cake with homemade honeycomb and biscoff cheesecake frosting guys?! There’s something delightfully organic about the juxtaposition of straight layer cakes piled high with messy frosting and topped with golden crunchy honeycomb. It’s a super easy cake to assemble, and I would thoroughly recommend it for all occasions/birthdays/rainy days.

In case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve officially taken my first real hiatus. My OCD-like tendencies have always stopped me from missing out on writing a blog post each month, purely because my archive list over there on the right would get messed up! Honestly, keeping up that archive list to satisfy my weird and annoying control and organisation obsession, has been in the back of my mind every month for the last 3 years. That is, until April of this year. I was busy. I was tired. I had tonsillitis. And frankly, I had zero creative inspiration after my last post. Every time I took out a mixing bowl or walked in to my kitchen with my apron on, I just thought about my Dad. And whilst eventually, I expect that to become a positive connotation, I’ve just needed some time to organise my thoughts. This organisation thing is really messing with me guys… eye roll emoji. This in mind, I stopped writing posts for the sake of the archives and thought long and hard about why I started the blog in the first place. It’s quite a personal thing, to post on the internet monthly, writing about cake but interspersed with frivolous and usually dramatised memoirs.

Family and friends have commented saying “Hums! Your recent posts are quite blunt, and don’t have your usual personality in them. Didn’t you know we only read it for your writing?!” Firstly, I didn’t know that, and secondly, SINCE WHEN DID Y’ALL STOP CARING ABOUT CAKE?! (Sidebar: They still care enough to demand and eat it…) This former point in mind, I thought about what to say to those of you who have faithfully read blog posts over the years, and any others who may have found themselves here by chance. I think they call it a creative, or, writer’s block. You know, when people start writing novels and then have to take a break because they can’t take it any further. Blogging is not on that scale, but after thinking about it, that’s all I can equate it to. The trauma of the last year is still taking its toll, and I prioritised my Master’s degree for fear of completely losing all concentration and attention span… On balancing, the decision to create cake which made me feel sad, or taking a much-needed break to focus on the rest of life, made sense to me. shrug emoji.

 

So, take my word for it when I say that this post, and hopefully the rest, will not be for the purpose of maintaining the archives, but because I genuinely want to write them, and I’ve enjoyed the baking and blogging process.

 

So the delightfully crunchy mass of calories pictured above and below… aka the reason most of you are here! This was actually a lot of fun to make. It’s a nice rainy day or bonding activity and the people around you will be especially nice to you if you feed them this. I made this on Christmas Eve, as I thought it was appropriately festive. ALSOOOOO honeycomb is literally so fun to make. This recipe makes a tonne extra, which my family devoured using a tiny hammer.

For the cake:

80g salted butter

280g caster sugar

240g plain flour

1tbsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

240ml whole milk

2 large eggs

150g Carnation tinned caramel

Recipe is an old Hummingbird Bakery one

For the honeycomb: 

200g caster sugar

5tbsp golden syrup

2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

From BBC Good Food

For the biscoff cheesecake filling:

120g salted butter

300g icing sugar

3 very heaped spoons of smooth biscoff spread

2 very heaped spoons of Philadelphia cream cheese

As much golden syrup as you need to make it creamy and delicious!

 

1. Heat an oven to 160FAN. Line 6” cake tins with baking parchment and grease the sides. If you use larger tins, you will get flatter layers but they will be just as tasty!

2. In a mixer, combine the butter, flour, sugar, salt, baking powder until it somewhat resembles damp sand. Add the milk and eggs to a jug and whisk it up. Add this mixture into the dry slowly, until everything is combined.

3. Weigh your cake batter if even layers are something that appeal to you (but definitely don’t feel obliged to do this! Home baking should be simple IMO). Bake each layer for around half an hour, or until it springs back to the touch and a cake skewer comes out clean. Let the cakes cool.

4. For the honeycomb, you just need to heat the sugar and golden syrup over a low heat, stirring gently until the sugar has dissolved. Then you can turn the heat up to medium and let the mixture turn golden. Once it’s there, turn the heat off and tip the bicarb in. Beat it furiously with a wooden spoon as it foams up. Tip into a lined tray and leave it until it hardens enough to break up.

5. For the frosting, beat the butter for about 5 minutes until it lightens in colour. Add the biscoff in, and follow with icing sugar. Use your intuition, if it needs to be more firm, add more icing sugar, and if it needs loosening, add golden syrup or milk. I never actually weigh these things soooo always take my frosting measurements as estimations!

6. Stack your cakes and decorate as you wish! I used hellllaaa glitter because Xmas AF.

 

 

PS. Please accept my sincere apologies if the imperfect archive list is now also bothering you. You are in my camp of subconsciously ordering colourful things in ROYGBIV order, organising lipsticks by hue, turning the volume up or down to maintain an even number (or a multiple of five), and justifying margins. It’s a tough life we lead.

PPS. For any potential employers reading this… Please note my exquisite attention to detail. It’s a good thing, right?