I invented a great compromise Chocolate Honey Cake recipe
You all should be the first to share my good news. My host for tonight's Rosh Hashana dinner requested that I make a chocolate cake. Naturally I wanted to make it a honey cake, but the chocolate honey cakes I've tried, such as Nigella's from her book Feast, have been fairly insipid. The light bulb went on in my head when I thumbed through that chapter in her book called "The Chocolate Cake Hall of Fame." Why not combine the Chocolate Guinness Cake recipe with the honey cake?
So I followed the honey cake recipe, only for the boiling water I substituted stout. I also added 1/2 teaspoon of salt since Nigella never puts salt in her cakes and I think it's necessary. I had enough batter for a little tasting cake, and I can attest that it came out beautifully. The malty bittersweetness of the beer nicely marries together the chocolate and the honey. I think you could still cut the sugar a bit, but it's a lot less cloying now. And the cake is moist enough that I'm going to skip the chocolate-honey glaze and just do a bittersweet ganache drizzle.
L'Shana Tova, hounds!
