A deliciously moist cake, sweetened with honey and bursting with delicious spiced orange flavours. Topped with blueberry greek yogurt. Contains no refined sugar!
At the beginning of this month the blogging world lost a little of it’s brightness, Selma from Selma’s Table passed away and left a big hole in our world. She was not only a skilled chef and writer, but also a supportive and cherished friend to so many. I always looked forward to reading her blog and was so happy to see her comments pop up on my posts, always so encouraging and kind! I can’t imagine the loss that her son, her family and her friends are feeling at this time and my thoughts go out to them every day. I will always miss her presence in my blogging life and regret that I was never able to meet her in person, but her generous nature and spirit will always be present here.
Selma was one of the most active and enthusiastic members of Fiesta Friday, so it was only right for her memory to be honored with a very special Fiesta Friday, one that will always be hers! Here we are sharing posts dedicated to this wonderful woman that touched so many of us. This is mine.
I knew I wanted to make one of Selma’s recipes to honor her, but which one to pick? There’s so many of hers on my “to make” list and I had no idea where to start! While scrolling through her blog, I rediscovered this Spiced Orange & Honey Cake of hers that I fell in love with all over again, I knew this was the one ! The flavours just sounded divine – orange, honey, cinnamon and allspice – all amazing on their own, and complimenting each other even better! The fact that this recipe contained 3 teaspoons of cinnamon also helped, we all know how much I love my cinnamon! This cake is also free of any refined sugar, sweetened with honey, xylitol (completely natural, despite it’s chemically sounding name!) and coconut sugar – great for those wanting to cut out refined sugars but still want to enjoy some sweet, delicious treats. And, without the topping, this cake is also dairy free!
And this Spiced Orange and Honey Cake really is all kinds of delicious! It’s so incredibly moist, the texture is very similar to that of a steamed pudding (the British version of pudding, not American – if there was any confusion!) – that might have something to do with the cup of black tea that goes into this cake! There’s so many wonderful flavours in this cake too; with allspice, cinnamon, orange and honey all shining through beautifully – it’s going to keep you coming back for more! Selma recommended you serve this cake with greek yogurt, honey and blueberries so I decided to make a greek yogurt topping that I flavoured with honey and blueberry puree, blueberries and orange are a match made in heaven and so this works beautifully with the cake! That’s the only way I differed from Selma’s recipe, and all I did was puree 100g blueberries and mix them, plus 1 tbsp honey, with 200g greek yogurt! Easy peasy!
This is a really easy cake to put together too, in fact it’s a one bowl cake! You whisk together the flour, baking powder, bicarb, salt and spices to combine and really aerate them – make a well in the centre and add the rest of your ingredients. Mix it to combine, and pour it into your bundt pan and bake! So easy, even the most novice of bakers can make this cake with beautiful results! That’s a sign of a good recipe in my books!
Xylitol sounds like a weird, hard to find ingredient if you’ve not used it before but it’s actually pretty common. You may be able to find it in your regular supermarket with the sugars, but if not it’s readily available on amazon and pretty much any health store will stock it (it’s a great sugar substitute for diabetics). It looks and acts the same as regular granulated sugar and you can substitute it 1:1 (so if you decided to make this cake with regular sugar, you’d use the same amounts stated in Selma’s recipe). I’m actually slightly allergic to xylitol, not enough to stop me enjoying this cake though! The brown sugar replacement to get a nice caramel flavour is coconut flower sugar, I actually had a tub of this in my cupboard because I saw it at the checkout in TK Maxx and impulse bought it – I’ve already used it a bunch of times and it’s awesome, mine is actually flavoured with lemon & ginger, which works wonderfully in this cake of course! Of course, the other sweetener in this cake is the well loved honey – which also gives it a lot of amazing flavour too!
You really should make this cake, if only to make your house smell divine! I didn’t want to take it out of the oven because the aroma it was giving my kitchen was too good, of course I did take it out – if it smelled that good, I could just imagine how good it tasted, and I wasn’t disappointed of course!
Recipe!
You can grab the recipe over on Selma’s blog right here, you definitely want to have a browse while you’re there too, there’s so many wonderful recipes to try and stories to read!
I am, of course, gonna be sharing Selma’s awesome recipe with Fiesta Friday! Grab a slice and make a toast to Selma!
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Sharing with…
Foodie FriDIY, Friday Favourites, Saucy Saturdays
Oh, I remember this. I’m so glad you gave it a try, Michelle, ‘coz I always take your recommendations very seriously. If you say this is good, it must be. It looks so incredibly moist! And I learned a new thing today, xylitol. Make that 2 new things, actually. Coconut flower sugar. How awesome does that sound! Must look for it! Thank you for the wonderful tribute! XOXO
Thank you, Angie!
It really is amazing, it gets the Giraffes Can Bake seal of approval haha!
Coconut flower sugar is amazing, definitely worth trying.
Xylitol is good too, but it makes my mouth sore so it won’t get a glowing recommendation from me haha!
This cake is gorgeous and looks so moist and delicious! A beautiful tribute to our sparkling Diva that is lighting the heavens. I am sure she is right there will all of us Fiesta Friday party goers.
Thank you Julie 🙂
What an excellent tribute, Michelle. This cake looks so good and moist and reminds me of Selma. I can almost imagine the flavors – cinnamon, orange…omg I need to give this a try soon!
Thank you Indu 🙂 You definitely should, it’s so good!
An excellent cake to celebrate Selma’s life, Michelle! I know she would have loved your addition of puréed blueberries in the glaze. Just beautiful, like Selma. Thank you.
Thank you Johanne 🙂
This is a beautiful cake Michelle!! Such a beautiful way to pay tribute to Selma too! I love how incredibly moist and flavourful this cake looks! I definitely want to try this recipe out too 🙂
Thank you Dini 🙂
You definitely should, it’s delicious – Selma definitely knew how to make spices work amazingly in a recipe!
I love a good, spiced cake and then your topping with blueberries, honey and yogurt made Selma’s cake extra special. I will have to check it out as it so pretty the way you have presented it.
I just checked Selma’s recipe and now I remember it as the one with the butterflies! Good Choice Michelle.
Thanks Judi!
Yes, Selma’s cake was presented beautifully, wasn’t it?
totally awesome Michelle!!!!!!!! This cake looks KILLER MOIST AND DENSE. I absolutely love the last shot and Selma is totally jazzed about this post I just know it! Thanks for joining us and I’m so glad you made this because now I am going to make it! xx sue
😀 Thank you Sue!
This cake looks and sounds so delicious. I keep meaning to use coconut sugar, nice to have a recipe to use it in when I find it, as everything else about it already sounds great. The glaze is a lovely addition as well, and all round a lovely tribute. Very fitting, and a great thing to toast Selma with.
Thank you Caroline!
I’m definitely gonna need to get some more coconut sugar when this runs out, it’s really good!
A touching tribute to your blogging friend. Never heard of coconut sugar? Hope I can find it. Doing a Interest search before I forget.
Thank you Faye.
I found mine in TK Maxx (TJ) of all places! It should be pretty easy to get online at least 🙂
Your cake looks delicious. A very lovely tribute!
Thank you, Arl xx
How wonderful! The cake looks amazing and your tribute is lovely (and I want your measuring spoons!!!!) xxxx
Oh! You noticed the spoons, too.
😀
Thank you Elaine!
They’re gorgeous, aren’t they? I thought it was fitting that I include them in the photos for this post because I won them in the FF challenge! xxx
What a lovely pick, Michelle. This cake looks so moist and oh so yum. Thanks for being a part of this tribute. xx
Thank you Jhuls <3 xxxx
What a lovely tribute to Selma! Thanks for linking up at #SaucySaturdays with this beautiful post Michelle… it’s special for sure 🙂
Thank you Swayam 🙂
Such a beautiful tribute and cake Michelle – I remember hers only too well. The cake looks so moist and wonderfully delicate, I feel I could just reach into the screen and take a slice. But alas…. I’ll have to only dream on 🙂
Thank you Loretta 🙂
You should definitely give the cake a go, it’s delicious!
The texture looks simply indescribable. I am going to have to give this lovely cake a try. <3
Thank you 😀 I hope you like it!
You have to tell me how you do those video shots on your blog! They add so much to an already gorgeous recipe! I love the ease of a bundt cake!
😀 I just take a series of photos while pouring/doing an action, then stitch them together in animation in photoshop!
You should definitely talk to Dini too, she does them and hers always look soo much better than mine (probably because her photos are better haha)