Honey Tea Cake

I am always looking for ways to showcase exotic Indian flavors in western dishes, especially desserts. I found this recipe for a Rosewater-Honey-Tea cake in this lovely little book - Piece of Cake. The cake brings out the flavors of India tea (chai) with its addition of cardamom and honey. Rosewater brings out a subtle floral aroma that doesn't compete with the cardamom. I thought it was an ideal cake to bring to a Christmas party. People were intrigued by the flavors and loved the unique taste. 

I adapted the cake slightly by reducing the prescribed sugar, removing baking powder, increasing baking soda, increasing cardamom powder, and cutting out on the prescribed frosting. Instead of frosting the cake, I used a light honey-lemon-rosewater drizzle to moisten and flavor the cake. And while the book is great with its wonderful collection of recipes, I am not an advocate of one-bowl-cakes. Dumping and mixing/beating all the cake ingredients using one bowl goes against the very grain of baking philosophy. The texture of the cake changes, the flour gets beaten more than necessary while the essential ingredients (like butter and sugar) don't get creamed as much as they should.

So here is my adapted version from the lovely source. 

Ingredients:

For the cake:

1. 1 cup All Purpose Flour
2. 1/2 (or 2/3) cup granulated sugar
3. 1 teaspoon FRESHLY ground cardamom (it makes a huge difference to use fresh cardamom)
4. 1 teaspoon baking soda
5. 1/4 teaspoon salt
6. 3 large eggs at room temperature
7. 1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
8. 1/2 cup liquid honey
9. 1/2 cup milk
10. 1 tablespoon rosewater
11. 1 teaspoon lemon zest

For the honey-lemon drizzle:

1. 1 tablespoon honey
2. 2 tablespoons lemon juice
3. 2 teaspoons rosewater

Preparation (this is my version):

1. Beat (using an electric mixer/beater) the butter on medium speed for a couple of minutes. Add the sugar and continue to beat until it creams together - another 2-3 minutes.
2. Add the eggs one at a time and beat on medium speed until the eggs are incorporated. Do not over beat the eggs
3. Add milk and honey and beat for a couple of minutes to mix everything. 
4. Finally add rosewater and lemon zest and mix well. 
5. Sift together the all purpose flour and baking soda and salt. Slowly add the dry ingredients  and gently mix with a rubber spatula. Do not over mix. 
6. The batter will be slightly thinner than most other cake batters. 
7. Pour the batter into a buttered and floured 9-inch cake pan. 
8. Bake for 35-40 minutes in a preheated oven at 350 F until a cake tester comes out with a few moist crumbs.
9. Let the cake cool for 20 minutes in the pan. Then run the edges with a knife, tap the pan down, and gently turn it into a wire rack and let it cool for 30 minutes.
10. Mix all the ingredients for the drizzle. Using a toothpick or skewer, poke holes on the cake and slowly drizzle the honey-lemon-rosewater over the cake. 

Serve after the cake has soaked in the drizzle. The cake tends to be moist because of the drizzle. If you would like, serve with some whipped cream.