honey cake
1
2.5
- noun
- /ˈhʌni keɪk/
:
pastel de miel
- He could smell his mother's baked goods, especially her honey cake, the pies made with graham cracker crusts, the wheat bread with raisins she made on special occasions, and that hot sauce.
Examples
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Sometimes my mother made white bread or even honey cakes when church members from the valley gave us wheat flour.
Fiction book (2002) -
He's very fond of the honey cakes as Tamar prepares them.
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What was it, honey cake?
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I hope there will be someone to give you a honey cake.
Blog text (10) -
First, we make and give out honey cakes.
Blog text (10) -
When my kids were in elementary school, we always chose their teachers as recipients of our honey cakes.
Blog text (10) -
She had brought hare-and-wine collops and honey cakes up from the kitchen.
Fiction book (1999) -
"Selecting a honey cake, Clare sat obediently at the older woman's feet.
Fiction book (1999) -
At the festival, everyone enjoyed a slice of delicious honey cake topped with nuts.
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She baked a wonderful honey cake for her friend's birthday party last weekend.
Synonyms
850
1.0
A sweet baked food made from flour, sugar, eggs, and fat
27
1.0
A sweet spiced cake or cookie flavored with ginger and honey
1
1.8
A cake made with warm spices like cinnamon and nutmeg
How Sweet
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a cake made with honey' is directly and predictably composed from 'honey' (a sweet bee product) + 'cake' (a sweet baked item); it is a straightforward noun–noun compound indicating the type or flavor of the cake. This compositional pattern is common in English and other languages, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents will readily infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
Honey cake is a simple name for a cake made with honey as the main sweetener and often spiced and warm. People eat it at holidays such as the New Year to wish for a 'sweet year', so the cake came to mean a special holiday treat.