Honey Cake Recipe with Juniper Cottage Co. Beeswax Birthday Candles

I’ve officially had it with supermarket birthday candles: the garish colours, the weird chemical smell, the way they bend like sad plastic worms the moment they get warm. For something that’s literally set on fire and stuck into food, they feel strangely joyless. Who knew there was something better out there? Enter beeswax candles: warm, golden, faintly honey-scented, and actually nice to have around a cake you’re about to eat.

Beeswax burns clean, looks beautiful in photos, and feels like a small but meaningful upgrade to the ritual of celebration. So before we get into the honey cake itself, I want to make the case for swapping out the cheap candles for something that matches the care you’re putting into baking. Below: a simple honey cake recipe, and a few photos of it topped with beeswax candles glowing exactly the way birthday candles should.

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Honey Cake with Beeswax Birthday Candles

adapted from this recipe from BBC Good Food

Ingredients

• 250g clear honey

• 225g unsalted butter

• 100g dark muscovado sugar

• 3 large eggs, beaten

• 300g self-raising flour

• 200ml double cream, whipped

Method

Step 1

Preheat the oven to fan 140C/ conventional 160C/gas 3. Butter and line two shallow (approx. 3cm deep) 20cm round cake tins. Cut the butter into pieces and pop into a medium pan with the honey and sugar. Melt slowly over a low heat. When the mixture is combined and liquid, remove from the heat and let cool slightly to avoid scrambling the eggs.

Step 2

Beat the eggs into the melted honey mixture using a wooden spoon. Sift the flour into a large bowl and pour in the egg and honey mixture, beating until you have a smooth, quite runny batter. This might look a little lumpy at first, but keep beating. A stand mixer is a great option here to save your arms!

Step 3

Pour the mixture into the tin and bake for 25 minutes until the cakes are well-risen, golden brown and spring back when pressed. A skewer pushed into the centre of the cake should come out clean.

Step 4

Turn the cakes out on a wire rack. Whilst they're cooling, whip the double cream until it forms a soft, whipped texture. Once the cakes are cool enough, spread a generous layer of cream to be sandwiched in between the two layers of cake, and the rest of the cream on the top. Add beeswax birthday candles and voila!

Happy baking,

Katy