Can I Make The Glaze For The Honey Chocolate Cake In Advance?

Our answer

Nigella's Honey Chocolate Cake (from FEAST) is sweetened with a combination of brown sugar and honey. The honey helps to keep the cake moist, as well as adding a subtle flavour. The cake is covered in a chocolate glaze.

The glaze is made from a combination of honey, dark (bittersweet) chocolate and icing (confectioner's) sugar. It needs to be slightly runny so that you can pour the glaze over the cake to coat the top and sides. It is possible to make the glaze in advance but we don't think that it will save you any time on the day you decorate the cake. The glaze with thicken as it cools, which means that you need to warm the glaze up again to be able pour it over the cake and in reality this probably means warming the glaze until it is runny and then letting it cool again to the correct consistency. And when you warm the glaze up you will need to be extra careful not to heat it too much, as the chocolate in the mixture could be come too hot and start to split the glaze. So it is easier to make the glaze on the day you need it from sctatch. If you want to make the bee decorations in advance then we would suggest using melted dark chocolate to mark the stripes and eyes on the bees instead of the glaze.