Honey Butter Cake – a honey infused layer cake recipe topped with honey cream cheese frosting and drizzled with a dramatic honey butterscotch glaze.
Today’s cake is the ultimate for honey lovers. The tender honey infused cake is delicious all by itself, straight out of the oven, with its buttery undertones and mellow sweetness. If you can resist the wafts of honey in the air, you’ll be rewarded when this cake pairs up with the tangy-sweet honey cream cheese frosting. Then comes the dramatic drip of liquid sunshine – the glistening honey butterscotch glaze, gently poured over the top and allowed to cascade down the sides. Sprinkle with a light dusting of sanding sugar and serve with an extra drizzle of honey butterscotch.
Honey Butter Cake
A honey infused layer cake recipe topped with honey cream cheese frosting and drizzled with a dramatic honey butterscotch glaze.
- Yield: One 8" Round Cake (3 layers) 1x
- Category: ✽ ✽ ✽ ✽
Ingredients
For the Honey Cake:
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup buttermilk
- ½ cup honey
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- 8 ounces unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1 ½ cups sugar
- 4 eggs, room temperature
For the Honey Cream Cheese Frosting:
- 12 ounces unsalted butter, room temperature
- 8 ounces cream cheese, softened
- 4 – 6 cups confectioners’ sugar
- ⅓ cup honey
For the Honey Butterscotch Glaze:
- ⅓ cup sugar
- ¼ cup honey
- ½ cup heavy cream
- 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
- pinch of fine sea salt
- gold sanding sugar (optional)
Instructions
Make the Honey Cake:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and lightly flour three 8″ round pans.
- In medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
- In small bowl, mix together the buttermilk, honey and vanilla. Set aside.
- In bowl of stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugar on medium speed 4 minutes until fluffy.
- Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping down sides of bowl as needed.
- Gradually add the dry and wet ingredients, alternating, starting and ending with dry ingredients. Mix until just combined, being careful not to over mix.
- Divide batter evenly between the three 8″ round pans.
- Bake for 30-35 minutes, until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean.
- Let cool in pans for 10 to 15 minutes, then remove to wire rack to finish cooling.
Make the Honey Cream Cheese Frosting:
- In bowl of stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter and cream cheese until combined.
- Gradually add confectioners’ sugar and continue to mix, scraping down sides of bowl as needed.
- Add honey and mix until smooth.
Make the Honey Butterscotch Glaze:
- Combine sugar and honey in a medium pan over medium heat. Stir until the sugar dissolves and you have a liquid.
- Continue to cook without stirring, swirling pan occasionally. Mixture will bubble and start to darken in color.
- Once mixture is butterscotch brown, stir using a wooden spoon and remove from heat.
- Carefully pour in the cream and stir until combined.
- Add butter and stir until smooth. Add salt and stir once more.
- Let sauce cool completely before using on the cake! This can be made in advance and stored in the refrigerator. Allow glaze to come to room temperature before using so that it pours easily.
Assemble the Cake:
- Place one layer of cake onto serving plate or cake stand and top with about one cup of honey cream cheese frosting. Repeat with second cake layer, more frosting and then last layer of cake.
- Crumb coat and frost cake with remaining frosting. Refrigerate for 20 minutes or until frosting is set.
- Drizzle butterscotch glaze over the top with small drips overflowing the edge. Refrigerate for 20 minutes or until glaze is set. Sprinkle top with gold sanding sugar, if desired.
Notes
- You may bake this as two full-sized 8″ round cake layers, with an increased bake time. Alternatively, I baked it as three intentionally shorter 8″ round layers that do not need to be torted (cut in half horizontally).
- If frosting is too thin after whipping, refrigerate for 30 minutes before assembling cake. The chilled frosting will have a thicker consistency. For an even thicker consistency, add additional confectioners’ sugar as desired.
- Find helpful tips on how to make beautiful drips here.
- Store in refrigerator. Serve at room temperature.
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Exquisite.That’s the word that keeps coming to mind when I look at the pictures of this cake. As I drooled over the pictures, it looked to me like you had layered honey butterscotch glaze within the layers… but the assembly instructions suggest that’s not the case. I think that dark layer I’m seeing is simply the tops of the cake layers. So, my question is: do you think that would be a good idea? To brush the tops of the layers with the honey butterscotch glaze? Or, do you think the glaze would just get absorbed by the cake?
The dark layer you’re seeing is simply the golden tops of the cake layers. Personally, I think the honey butterscotch glaze is better suited for the outside drip – concerned that the whole thing could get too sweet if you also added it between the cake layers. But you could certainly give it a go, if you want!
Alternatively, you could use the honey butterscotch glaze for the outside drip as I did, and then serve a small dollop of extra glaze on the side of the plate. Allowing you to test out if you like it with extra glaze – or not. Just an idea. 😉
Enjoy!
I read some of the reviews about the layers sinking, and I measured the ingredients out by weight. The sugar is the same weight as the flour so I treated it as a high ratio cake.(The butter is beatem into the dry ingredients with the eggs/liquid added in two batches) It turned out perfectly!
This cake looks lovely! Do the tops need to be trimmed at all or does the cake bake up quite “flat” on top?
They actually bake pretty flat, especially since we’re baking it as three intentionally shorter layers. You may have a little that you need to trim off the top, but not much.
I wanted to make this cake today until I saw that you needed a paddle mixer would using a traditional hand mixer make the cake come out differently?
I have done it with one and it turned out great!
I made this cake yesterday with a blood orange honey. It was great… I wonder, do you think I can substitute AP flour for cake flour to give it a finer texture?
★★★★★
Dear Brasilian Baker,
It’s quite easy to make your own cake flour with all purpose flour. Place two tablespoons of cornstarch (British term is cornflour) in your one-cup measure, then fill the rest of the cup with all-purpose flour.
I weigh all of my ingredients, and use 4.4 ounces for 1 cup of flour. To weigh the ingredients, I just place the two tablespoons of cornstarch on the scale, then add enough flour to make 4.4 ounces.
The cornstarch that makes up a portion of the flour reduces the protein content of the flour, which makes the cake more tender and fluffy.
Yes, you could substitute cake flour if you’d like. Enjoy!
I made this cake last night. When I first tired it, I thought it was too sweet. I let it sit in the fridge over night, and the next day it was PERFECT! Thank you Carrie!
Wonderful, thanks for the feedback! Glad you enjoyed this recipe!
Just made this cake and must say that me and my partner both found it too sweet. Maybe the amount of confectioners sugar in the frosting was too high together with the honey. I couldnt even finish one piece of the cake, which is a shame.
★★★
This is very moist, dense cake. The honey in the cake recipe and frosting is just enough. The butterscotch drizzle is more honey than butterscotch. Made this for my dear son’s 2nd birthday party this November, added chocolate painted madeleines stuck with toasted almonds for pine cone decoration as well as a few honeybees made from white Lindt chocolate painted with turmeric and striped with chocolate, chocolate espresso bean for head and two more toasted almonds for the wings (to get the wings stuck in the chocolate ball I heated up a knife-tip and melted the slot for the almonds then froze in freezer). Overall it was a pretty presentation and my dear son loved every piece of it (all but the chocolate espresso bean!!). Wish I could upload a photo to share!!
★★★★★
So glad you and your family enjoyed it Jennifer — and your decorations sound adorable!! Post a photo on Instagram and tag @thecakeblog or use hashtag #thecakeblog! That’s the best way to share it with us. 📷🍰📷
Hi there,
What would be the baking time for two pans instead of three?
Thank you!
I’m sorry Anna, I don’t have an exact baking time for this modification. Just be sure not to overfill your pans and increase the baking time until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
Hi Carrie,
Thank you for the recipe. I tried this recipe twice. The first time around, the cake didn’t cook at all despite leaving it in the oven for an hour. The second time the toothpicks came out clean. I proceeded to assemble the cake and frost it. So far so good. The glaze turned out thicker than intended: not sure why. When we cut into the cake it just didn’t look cooked. It was very dense! Please may I ask you for advice on what possibly could have gone wrong?
If you’re cake seemed overly dense, I’m wondering if a heavy hand when measuring the flour was the culprit. Too much flour will leave any baked good heavy and dense. Spooning the flour into your measuring cup will result in a more accurate measure than using the measuring cup to scoop the flour directly from the container. Hope that helps for next time!
Could there bee a better cake recipe for a beehive birthday cake? I don’t think so!
★★★★★
Hi, I had a question, I have a mixer with a paddle attachment that scrapes the side of my bowl. Does this effect my mixing time with my butter in my batter? Some recipes recommend a reduction in mixing time because of this paddle attachment. Does it just need to be beat until color changes and it becomes lighter in texture? Thank you.
I have the layers baked.
The glaze is done and cooling in a bowl (though it’s not as beautifully-golden as yours…)
My question – because I am making this for my family and they HATE things that are TOO sweet – can I decrease the amount of confectioners’ sugar in the frosting? I think it’ll still hold up…(?)
The confectioners’ sugar does provide stability to the frosting and reducing it too much will result in more of a glaze — but it will still taste delicious! So start off low and add as you see fit. The refrigerator will definitely help set the frosting because the butter and cream cheese are firmer when cold. All that being said, if your family really dislikes overly sweet — go very light on the glaze or leave it off completely. You could serve it on the side and allow them to use as much or as little as they enjoy. 😉
SO nice of you to reply.
Thank you.
I think I will leave the glaze off as when I refrigerated it, it became SOLID and not able to pour it…
Merry CHristmas 🙂
Please let me know what 1 cup is in grams for this recipe. When I tried googling, I got a bunch of different measurements. To add to the confusion, I have two separate measuring cups – one says a cup is 200 GM’s, the other says a cup is 240 GM’s. Help please!
I tried other cake recipes from Europe and this was my favorite. Are there any other ways to add more flavor to the cake?
This cake is everything I hoped for.
I have been baking for 20 years and this is the first honey cake I have made, and not the last!
My fiance and I are getting married soon and we decided a home made cake is the way to go!
I made a trial run icing (delicious!) glaze (delicious!) and all, and it is with out a doubt the cake for our wedding.
The consistency of the cake is perfect because..
It doesn’t crumble when you ice it
Its dense enough to be a layer cake
And when it bakes it doesn’t seem to be uneven in thickness so no modifications.
I added less sugar to the batter, I made a half batch so instead of 1 1/2 cups of sugar it was 3\4 but I added 1\2 cup, it was not too sweet but still sweet enough to be called a cake!
My fiance loves it too!
The only note I will make is that for decorative icing I will have to make a separate normal butter icing, the cream cheese icing is delightful! But I didn’t have much luck using it for decorating, it wasn’t the right consistency.
But no problem!
I will post a picture of our wedding cake when the time comes!
Thank you for a truly lovely recipe!
★★★★★