chamomile olive oil honey cake

the recipe for this cake was taken from “easy Mediterranean” by sue Quinn. it took me a while to decide which recipe I wanted to try first as there are so many great recipes to choose from,  but I went with this chamomile honey cake, I would really recommend this book if you love Mediterranean food. I made the cake as a tray bake rather than a round cake like in the book and took it on a picnic. we stopped in a corn field at about 6.30 after a long hot day and I could not wait to sit down and enjoy a slice. the weather has been really great recently here in England so we have been able to have picnics. we came across this field on a dog walk and decided to go back there.

I used some gustare honey that I was sent, it is Australian honey, the jar I used was acacia honey. the company has a base here in the uk as well as in Australia, it had so much flavour it was perfect for this cake.

recipe

makes one 20cm round cake (or like me use a rectangle tray which I got from anthropologie)

• 125ml (1/2 cup) milk
• 3 tbsp. chamomile flowers or 4 tea bags
• 250g (1 2/3 cup) self raising flour
• 150g (2/3 cup) caster sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• generous pinch of salt
• 250ml (1 cup) mild olive oil
• 70g honey
• 3 eggs

preheat the oven to 160c (315f) oil the cake pan and line with baking paper.

1. pour the milk into a pan and gently warm through with out letting it reach the boil, then remove from the heat and add the chamomile and let steep for 10 minutes to infuse the chamomile.
2. now whisk together the flour, sugar and baking powder and salt in a large bowl, then in another bowl whisk together the oil, honey and eggs.
3. strain the milk and remove the tea and measure out the milk you have, you need 125ml so add more milk if necessary,
4. stir the infused milk into the oil mixture, then pour this into the flour mixture, mixing well until combined being sure not to over mix it.
5. pour the cake batter into the prepared tin and bake for 40-50 minutes (if you are baking the tray bake like me it wont take as long tray 30 minutes) once cooked a knife inserted should come out almost clean.
6. let cool then make icing, mix 150g icing sugar with the zest and juice of one lemon, you can loosen the mixture with a splash or milk, pour over the cake.
7. sprinkle on some more zest and slice