Madeira Honey Cake
This is the recipe for the traditional Madeira Honey Cake, usually made on Christmas but also all year round on the island of Madeira and originally named in Portuguese bolo de mel. It is made with "mel de cana" which literally means "cane honey," otherwise known as molasses.
Source and licence
"Madeira Honey Cake" from the Wikibooks Cookbook (https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:Madeira_Honey_Cake, revision 4658407), by its contributors (https://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Cookbook:Madeira_Honey_Cake&action=history), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).
Read the original CC-BY-SA-4.0 Revision 4658407
What was changed: Reformatted by FoodByNation from the wiki page: ingredients and steps extracted, links and templates removed, diet notes detected from the ingredients. This adaptation is also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Portugal. Associated with Portugal by FoodStudio's reading of the page's title and categories (confidence 0.6). "Associated with" means only that the evidence named here links this recipe to that place. A recipe isn't labelled as representing an entire country because a source associates it with one, and regional origins are kept where the source gives them.
Create an image with FoodStudio Made by our AI generator from your own prepaid SecondMem credits. We keep no picture from the source.
Ingredients
- 9 ounces (250 g) Bread dough from the baker's shop
- 5 tablespoons / 69 g Baking soda, dissolved in the wine
- 1 cup / 240 g Madeira wine
- 1.8 L / 92 ounces (2560 g) Molasses
- 27 ounces (750 g) Pork fat
- 18 ounces (500 g) Butter
- 90 ounces (2500 g) Flour
- 36 ounces (1000 g) White granulated sugar
- 1.8 ounces (50 g) Candied lemon peel, cut into cubes
- 0.9 ounce (25 g) Erva-doce (anise, ground and sifted)
- 1.8 ounces (50 g) Cinnamon
- 0.9 ounce (25 g) Ground cloves
- 18 ounces (500 g) Walnuts, cut into halves
- 9 ounces (250 g) Ground almonds
- 4 ea. / 392 g Oranges, juiced and zested
Method
- One day before making the cake, buy the bread-dough at the baker's shop, sprinkle a little bit of flour on the dough, put it in a towel and keep it in a warm place until the next day.
- Dissolve the baking soda into the Madeira wine.
- Warm the molasses in a saucepan, add the butter and pork fat, and stir until melted and combined. Let this mixture cool.
- Sift flour into a bowl, and mix in the sugar. Make a well and put the bread dough into it.
- Work the flour-sugar mixture into the bread dough. As soon as this is well-joined, start to incorporate the molasses-fat mixture little by little.
- Add some of the candied lemon peel, as well as the Madeira wine, orange juice and orange zest, anise, cinnamon, and cloves. Incorporate and knead thoroughly until the dough doesn't stick to the bowl.
- Cover the dough with a towel and put it in a warm spot. Keep it in a warm place for 3–4 days.
- Grease the baking pans. This cake is traditionally made in wide, round, low pans.
- Divide the dough into parts of 250–500 g or 750 g, depending on your baking pans.
- Decorate the cake with half-walnuts, sliced almonds, and the rest of the candied lemon peel.
- Bake for about 50 minutes at 355 °F (180 °C). Let cool down before taking it out of the baking pan.