Easy Honey Cake Recipe - Traditional Welsh Recipe – Yum Eating (2024)

This traditional Welsh honey cake is a very light sponge recipe with a subtle honey flavour infused with cinnamon.

Easy recipe to make, pretty much all in one cake baking method and baked in one or two loaf cake tins. The recipe is based on a traditional Welsh Honey Cake recipe.

Why make this recipe?

• Easy sponge recipe to make – all in one method
• Fabulous taste of honey & cinnamon
• The cake keeps well

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What exactly is Welsh honey cake?

This is a traditional Welsh cake recipe that uses a fair amount of honey to flavour the cake. It’s a firmer type of a sponge cake that’s usually baked in a loaf cake tin.

This honey cake recipe goes as far as the time of the Crusades (11th century) and it’s very commonly found across the whole UK in various versions. The Welsh version includes cinnamon, which goes particularly well with the taste of honey.

Allergies & dietary requirements

This cake is not suitable for vegan, dairy free and gluten free diets. There are changes you can make to this recipe to make it more suitable for your specific needs.

Gluten Free – use gluten free flour mix

Dairy free – use plant based butter and milk

Ingredients & Possible Substitutions

Honey

Any type of runny honey will work with this recipe. Depending on what type of honey you use, you might end up with a slightly different flavour. For example forest honey is much stronger and darker in flavour than meadow honey.

In theory, this recipe will work with a part honey and part sugar syrup – such as maple or agave, but it will lose its honey flavour, so normally I just use honey and not any maple syrup or golden syrup substitution.

Sugar

The best sugar for this recipe is light brown or brown sugar or other natural sugars such as coconut sugar (or some of the coconut sugar alternatives). If you use white caster sugar, the flavour won’t be as rich although the recipe will still work.

Flour

I’ve used self-raising cake flour for this recipe, which is what the original recipe included. If you are using plain cake flour, you’ll need to add extra baking powder and bicarbonate of soda (about 1 teaspoon of baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda extra).

If you are using gluten free plain (cake) flours, make sure you add about 1/2 teaspoon of xanthan gum, unless your flour mix doesn’t contain it already.

Butter

I prefer to use unsalted butter and add a pinch of salt, or you can use salted butter to get the same effect.

Milk

Any kind of milk (or cream diluted with water) will do as there are only 4 teaspoons. You can use plant based milk too.

Bicarbonate of soda

Although we are using self-raising flour, we’ll still need the extra rise from the bicarbonate of soda.

Egg

Only one egg is needed and you’ll need to separate it to cream the egg yolk and whisk the egg white to give the honey cake extra rise.

Cinnamon

A powdered cinnamon spice mix is a great addition to this honey cake recipe. It works great with the honey flavour.

If you are not fond of cinnamon, you can either leave it out or replace it with a different blend of warming spices such as mixed spice, gingerbread spice or festive spice mix. All these spice mixes go well with the honey flavour.

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How to make traditional Welsh honey cake recipe

Preheat the oven to about 180 c or 350 F. Mix together the flour, cinnamon and bicarbonate of soda.

Cream the butter and sugar.

Separate the egg yolk from the egg white. Beat the yolk into the sugar and butter mixture and then gradually add the honey.

Stir in the flour with some milk (you don’t have to use up all 4 tablespoons of milk, but that’s what we used for our batch) and blend all together lightly.

Beat the egg white until it reaches stiff peaks and fold gently into the mixture.

Spoon into your cake tins and sprinkle a bit of caster sugar on the top.

Bake for about 30 minutes for 2 small cakes or about 40 minutes for large 1 lb cake tin. If you see your cake browning too quickly, just lower the temperature slightly.

Leave to cool down on a cooling rack.

Variations on this recipe

We used local Welsh honey to make it extra special and as we had friends coming who are gluten intolerant, I made a gluten-free version.

It came out really well, the sponge was very light despite the fact we didn’t have an electric whisk and did everything by hand. Just a note on flour.

I used self-raising gluten free flour which already had ‘Xanthan Gum’ included. Xantham Gum is an ingredient, that basically helps to hold the gluten free flour together and in a way it replaces the gluten in it’s functionality.

Not all gluten-free flours include Xanthan Gum, so check the ingredients list on the back of the one you are using. If it doesn’t include, just add in 1 teaspoon of Xanthan Gum for 225g (this recipe).

You can buy Xanthan Gum separately and it’s usually available in gluten free section of large supermarkets or health shops.

Traditionally you would put more caster sugar on the top of the cake when it’s finished, but we left the extra sugar out.

If you want to you can also add about 100 grams of dried sugared ginger or dried currants or other dried fruit alternatives to complement the honey flavour.

How to serve honey sponge cake

This honey cake is perfect as it is, but if you want to you can also serve it with a homemade vanilla ice cream, spoonful of or Lime Curd.

You can also drizzle it with a little bit of brown sugar syrup or earl grey tea sugar syrup.

Can I scale up or down this recipe?

This recipe is for 2 lb (pound) loaf cake tin or for two 1 lb (pound) loaf cake tins. You can easily double or triple this honey cake recipe, but I’d probably use two to three 2 lb loaf tins, rather than one large baking tray.

Can this cake recipe be made in advance?

Yes, this honey cake recipe can be made 1-2 days before you want to serve it as it keeps reasonably well.

Once baked and cooled down, wrap it in a cellophane or foil and keep in an air tight container with a lid on. Don’t slice the cake until you want to serve it to prevent it from drying out.

How to store this recipe

This traditional Welsh honey cake recipe keeps really well – ours was fine for about 3-4 days stored in a bread bin and loosely wrapped in greaseproof paper or plastic bag.

Can I freeze honey cake

Yes, this Welsh honey cake freezes really well. I sometimes double up the recipe and I freeze half of the cake for later.

Once the cake has cooled down completely, wrap it into plastic bag or a cling film and place in another bag to make sure that no moisture will escape (or get in). Place inside your freezer somewhere where it’s flat, so that the cake doesn’t indent or squish as it’s freezing.

The honey cake should be fine for up 6 months, but I usually try to eat mine within 1-3 month.

To defrost your cake, just leave it overnight in the room temperature – unwrapped. This will ensure that the cake will be nice and soft and not dried out.

This recipe & me

This honey cake recipe is one of the nicest recipes I’ve recently tried. We have just been on a walking holiday in Wales and I found this local version of this easy honey cake recipe.

We used local Welsh honey to make it extra special and as we had friends coming who are gluten intolerant, I made a gluten-free version.

This was my first ever attempt to bake in AGA and suffice to say, I had to cut off the top of the cake…and the sides….and the bottom….

But, in the end everyone enjoyed the cake and I love to know what you think when you get the chance to try this recipe yourself.

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This blog post was originally written on 4 October 2015 and last updated on 13 November 2022