Bees and Trees: A Honey Cake

So although honey isn't directly a tree ingredient, blossom from fruit trees is so vital for the bees to make the honey I wanted to include it as a tree ingredient anyway. The mutually beneficial relationship between bees and trees is really quite beautiful and is nature working at its best. The trees rely on bees for pollination and as a reward the bees get the nectar from the flowers to produce their food; the honey.

As part of TREE AIDS work there are projects that focus on bee keeping and the planting of malliferous (honey producing) trees. In Burkina Faso as part of TREE AIDS work people are also tought how to build bee hives as well planting trees that are particularly good for bees, one of these being the Mango Tree. Projects like this one are really helpful in a number of ways, they are beneficial for the regeneration of land and increase biodiversity through the tree planting. Honey production also helps to create sustainable income generation for communities and honey becomes available for domestic use too.

Here's a recipe for you to try that is from a website called CDKitchen and looks absolutely delicious! Tree Ingredients include Cinnamon which comes from the bark of a tree, Cloves, Coffee and indirectly Honey.

Ingredients

560g cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
3 large eggs
230ml or 225g honey
230g sugar
230ml vegetable oil
120ml cup brewed coffee
60ml cup water

Directions

• Preheat oven to 350 F, gas mark 4 and generously grease pan.
  
• Into a large bowl sift together flour, baking powder, cinnamon, baking soda, salt, and cloves.


• In a small bowl lightly beat eggs. Make a well in center of flour mixture and add eggs with remaining ingredients, whisking until combined well.


• Pour batter into pan and bake for about 50 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.
  


• Leave to cool on a wire rack.