This chocolate honey cake features thin chocolate cake layers separated with honey and sweetened condensed milk-spiked cake cream. A real show stopper!
Layer cakes are extremely popular throughout Europe and they come in all different shapes, sizes, and flavors. In this recipe, the chocolate flavor of the cake is balanced perfectly with sweetened condensed milk and honey cake cream. The end result? A beautiful spectacle that’s almost too pretty to slice into with a knife…
Making a Chocolate Honey Layer Cake from Scratch
The most tedious part of this recipe is baking the individual layers. Aside from that, it’s pretty straightforward and so worth the wait!
Make the Cake Layers
- Pulse the Chocolate Chips: Place the chocolate chips (or a chocolate bar) into the food processor and pulse it into small pieces.
- Mix the Wet Ingredients: In the bowl of a stand electric mixer, whisk the eggs and honey until the mixture triples in volume.
- Mix the Dry Ingredients: In a separate bowl, stir the all-purpose flour, baking soda, and cocoa powder together.
- Add in the Oil & Chocolate: Next, stir the oil and chocolate into the wet ingredients.
- Fold the Flour In: In small portions, fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients.
- Divide & Roll the Dough: Next, divide the dough into eight equal pieces. On a floured surface, roll a dough piece out flat and transfer it to baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
- Bake the Cake Layers: Bake a cake layer at 350°F for 5-7 minutes or until lightly browned. Once the layer is done, remove it from the oven and trim it into a perfect circle using a dinner plate as a stencil. Repeat the process until all your cake layers are baked.
Whip Up the Cake Cream
- Make the Cake Cream: In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the sweetened condensed milk, Irish cream liqueur, and extra cold heavy cream together until the mixture is thick.
Assemble the Cake
- Assemble the Cake: Spread a thin layer of cream on the serving plate and top with cake layer. Spread on a layer of cake cream, followed by another cake layer. Repeat until you have no more cream or layers left.
- Decorate the Cake: Frost the outside and top of the cake with the remaining cake cream and refrigerate the cake overnight. Decorate it as you wish and enjoy!
4 Tips for the Best Chocolate Honey Cake
A couple of handy tips and tricks will help you get a bakery-worthy chocolate honey cake.
- Weigh the dough pieces super consistent layers. Although it’s not completely necessary, you can weigh out the dough pieces with a food scale to ensure each one is consistent in size.
- Flour the surface generously before rolling out the dough. This cake dough is pretty sticky, so you’ll want to make sure your work surface is covered with plenty of flour before you get to rolling.
- Use extra cold heavy whipping cream. Cold heavy whipping cream makes for the fluffiest and firmest cake cream. If you have to, place it in the freezer for 10 minutes before beating it.
- Apply cream to the bottom of the plate to create a “glue”. To make sure your cake doesn’t slide around when you move it, spread a generous amount of cake cream on the bottom of the serving plate before you start assembling. This will act as a nice “glue” that will hold the cake in place.
Different Ideas for Decorating
Half of the fun of baking cakes is adding your own personal touch to the decorating. Below, find a couple of ideas to inspire you.
- Use the cake trimmings to dust the sides of the cake. Prevent food waste and add a pretty texture to the outside of the cake by blending up the cake trimmings and dusting the crumbs around the sides of the cake.
- Dust the sides with crushed cookies. Blend up some Oreos in a blender and dust the sides of the cake with the cookie crumbs.
- Add on marinated cherries on top. For a pop of fruity flavor, assemble canned cherries around the edges of the cake on top of dollops of piped cream.
- Pipe on whipped cream dollops. Pipe on dollops of whipped cream along. the edges of the cake and shave dark chocolate all over the top.
- Drizzle on chocolate ganache stripes. Boil 1/2 cup of heavy whipping cream in a small saucepan and melt in 1/3 cup of chocolate chips. Drizzle the top of the cake with a zig zag of the ganache.
Properly Storing Your Cake
This chocolate honey cake is the perfect candidate for prepping 2-3 days in advance. The longer it sits, the more it sets and develops it’s flavors. For best results, keep it stored in an airtight cake container to prevent it from absorbing smells in your refrigerator or getting damaged.
FAQ
Do chocolate and honey go together well?
Yes! The bitterness of chocolate is offset by the sweetness of the honey for a really nice, rich flavor in most cakes and baked goods.
Can you use honey instead of sugar in cakes?
You can substitute honey for sugar in some cakes, but not all of them. It really depends on the texture that you are trying to achieve.
Can you skip out on the liqueur in chocolate honey cake?
Yes! Feel free to skip out on the liqueur altogether. It does add a nice depth of flavor, but isn’t 100% necessary.
Does chocolate honey cake require any sugar or butter?
This chocolate honey cake doesn’t require any additional sugar or butter. The honey and sweetened condensed milk make it sweet and moist enough as-is.
Can you substitute Irish cream liqueur for Kahlua coffee cream in cakes?
In most cakes, you can substitute different liqueurs in as you wish. For this particular recipe, Kahlua would work great.
More Tasty Chocolate Dessert Recipes
- Drunken Cherry Cake (Classic Recipe) – Liqueur cake with chocolate ganache and cherries
- Chocolate Nutella Banana Cake – Chocolate sour cream cake with Nutella and bananas
- Cake Prague (Chocolate Cake Recipe) – Coffee-spiked chocolate cake
- Strawberry Chocolate Cake (Extra Easy) – Chocolate cake with fresh strawberries
Recipe
Ingredients
Chocolate-honey Layer Cake
- 3 eggs
- 3/4 cup dark or milk chocolate chips
- 4 tbsp honey
- 2 tbsp canola oil or light olive oil
- 2 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 2 tsp cacao powder
Chocolate-honey Cake Cream
- 2 cup heavy whipping cream very cold
- 1 cup sweetened condensed milk
- 3 tbsp Irish cream liqueur
Instructions
Preparing the Chocolate Honey Cake Layers
- In a food processor, pulse the chocolate chips into tiny pieces and set them aside.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the eggs with honey. Beat them together until they turn foamy and triple in volume.
- In a separate bowl, stir the flour, baking soda, and cacao together. Set the mixture aside.
- Stir in the oil and chocolate into the egg mixture and stir until well-combined.
- In small portions, fold in the flour mixture into the eggs. Mix until the ingredients are well-combined.
- Divide the dough into eight equal pieces.
- On a well-floured surface, roll out a dough piece as large and flat as you can (you'll trim the layers down later, but this will help give you more surface to work with). To transfer it to the baking sheet easily, roll it up onto the rolling pin and unroll it onto the baking sheet.
- Bake the cake layer at 350°F for 5-7 minutes or until lightly browned. While one layer is baking, roll out the next dough piece. Once the layer is done, remove it from the oven and trim it into a perfect circle using a dinner plate as a stencil. Save the cake trimmings for decorating. Repeat the process until all your cake layers are baked.
Making the Chocolate Honey Cake Cream
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the sweetened condensed milk, Irish cream liqueur, and extra cold heavy whipping cream together until the mixture is thick and reaches stiff peaks.
- Spread a thin layer of cream on your serving plate.
Assembling the Cake
- Place a cake layer on top of the cream on the serving plate and spread a layer of cake cream on top. Place another cake layer on top and repeat the process until you run out of cream and cake layers.
- Frost the outside of the cake with the remaining cake cream and refrigerate the cake overnight. The next day, blend up the leftover cake trimmings and decorate the sides of the cake with them. Optionally, you can pipe dollops of cream all over edges of the cake and place a chocolate chip right in the center.
We just made your 12 layer Russian honey cake and it was great. We're going to make this next, but what would sweetened condensed milk be in the UK? Is it just standard nestle condensed milk?
Hi Leah, I did not know that sweetened condensed milk is called differently in the UK. If the Nestle condensed milk is sweet, then that is what you would use.
What could you subsititute for irish cream if you didnt want alcohol?
Hey Melanie, you can skip it altogether. It's there only for a little kick. Keep us updated with the outcome. 🙂
This is absolutely delicious! We really love your recipes Natalya. Are you interested in becoming a Chicory recipe partner?
So I made this cake and it looks beautiful. But it won't upload. Anways, I was disappointed in the cake with couple of reasons. I had to make 2 batches because it was short. The first batch was better than the 2nd one tho was hard to roll out. The 2nd batch was even more dry. I had to make 4 layers a batch because 1 layer of the 8th couldn't stretch out far. And so this morning, the cake was hard. It stayed overnight in the fridge. When cutting into the cake with a fork, all the layers fall apart. And only the cream taste good. Overall I wasn't happy. 🙁
It sounds like something went wrong in the process because with the recipe I wasn't short. I am sorry that your experience wasn't perfect.
This cake is not supppuse to have sugar in it besides the honey?
No, all you need to use is honey in the dough.
Hello, have you ever try to freeze cakes? I have a wedding and I have yo bake a lot in advance. Thank you!
I have never froze cakes. I know some people freeze cakes. You can prep the layers ahead of time and than cream them a few days before the wedding.
when i need to add oil?
With chocolate, I will add it into description. Thank you! 😉
Can I use Kahlua coffee cream instead of the Irish cream?
Yes, for sure! The flavor would be a bit different but it would still be very good.
Wow! This cake looks amazing! I'll definitely try it this weekend- thank you 🙂 I was wondering, however, how tall this cake comes out. I hoping to make an impressive, tall cake and think I might need to double this recipe, maybe?
Yes, double the cake because it's a pretty short cake. Not very large in size too.