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Rita's chocolate and honey cake

Stephanie Alexander
Stephanie Alexander

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Rita's chocolate and honey cake
Rita's chocolate and honey cakeMarina Oliphant

I seem to have an insatiable need to collect recipes for chocolate cakes. I always intend to try them immediately but it doesn't usually happen and the cuttings end up in a series of shoe boxes. This recipe is from a yellowed January 1994 clipping from The Age in which various food writers recall their favourite chocolate cake. I couldn't resist patting on grated chocolate a la Paragon cafe. My hands were a sight, but the result was a success.

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Ingredients

  • 2 eggs

  • 1/2 cup light oil (I used grapeseed)

  • 3/4 cup honey

  • 1 cup sugar

  • grated rind of 1 orange

  • 1 cup self-raising flour

  • 1 cup plain flour

  • 2 tbsp cocoa

  • scant teaspoon each of ground cinnamon and mixed spice

  • 1/2 tsp ground cloves

  • 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

  • 1 cup boiling water

  • 100g of 60 per cent dark chocolate, grated (optional)

Method

  1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees. I used a 24-centimetre non-stick ring tin.

    Grease tin and dust lightly with flour.

    Mix together eggs, oil, honey, sugar and grated orange rind.

    Sift together flour, spices and cocoa. Add to mixture and stir well.

    Lastly, add bicarbonate of soda to the boiling water, add to mixture and stir in carefully.

    Bake for about an hour (mine took 50 minutes in a fan-assisted oven), or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. When the cake is ready, the sides will have shrunk away from the edge of the tin.

    Allow the cake to cool to faintly warm before patting on chocolate and stand the cake rack over a tray to catch the fallout.

     

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Stephanie AlexanderStephanie Alexander is an Australian cook, restaurateur and food legend.

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