Let Them (and Me) Eat Cake!

I haven't ventured into the arena of food/cooking/recipes here at the blog, but I do love to cook and spend most of my time in the kitchen (where I have the laptop).  Kitchens are my favorite places and I'm so fond of them that I've even contemplated venturing into kitchen design professionally.  It might happen yet.

In the meantime, however, I've been having a food craving lately.  Some years ago, a local commercial bakery that distributes to grocery store chains in the Northeast offered a wonderful cake in its product line.  It was called their "Nut 'n' Honey Round Cake."  It was a simple yellow cake with a chocolate frosting flavored with a bit of honey and topped with walnuts.  It was my favorite for years, so much so that I even asked my mom many years ago to serve that as my birthday cake.  (I'm sure she appreciated not having to bake a cake from scratch - which she did periodically and wonderfully.) 

The bakery stopped offering the cake to grocery stores some years ago and I've been sad about that ever since.  So, this week I finally pulled together the ingredients I'd need to recreate the cake.  I am not the world's greatest baker, so I opted for the easy, short-cut approach - boxed cake mix, even ready-made frosting - because I think the secret to this cake isn't in the "made from scratch" approach - it's in the blending of key flavors. 

I made the cake per the package directions, only instead of adding the full 1 1/4 cups of water needed to moisten the mix, I substituted about 1/4-cup of honey for 1/4 cup of the water.  (I had warmed about 1/2-cup honey slightly in a pan just to liquify it further, using half for the cake and half for the frosting.)  Then, I poured the contents of one ready-made milk chocolate frosting container into a bowl and added the remaining 1/4-cup of warmed honey to the bowl, and mixed it into the frosting with an electric hand-mixer.  The result was a slightly lighter and creamier (and tastier) frosting than the stiff blend that came out of the container, which made it the perfect consistency for easy spreading.  If you prefer a darker color, you can always use a dark chocolate flavored frosting instead.

I baked the cake per the package directions (using, in this case, two 9-inch round pans), then, after the cake cooled, I assembled the two layers, spreading black raspberry jam (rather than the frosting) between them.  (I love cakes with a tasty fruit jam between the layers.)  Then I frosted the top and sides with the honey-laced chocolate frosting and finished it with ground walnuts on top.  Voila!  I give you my quick-and-easy version of Nut 'n' Honey Round Cake:

I'm pleased to report that this version of my favorite cake tastes just as good as the original that inspired it.  Yum!