Dorie Greenspan's Spiced Honey Cake

While I have not posted anything here in over a month, I have been baking every Sunday as usual. Hopefully I can get all caught up here and then post weekly again. For Christmas, I received a copy of Dorie Greespan's book, Baking Chez Moi. It's a impressive collection of recipes ranging from simple everyday cakes to labor-intensive fancy cakes, from classic French recipes to goodies that Dorie invented on her own, and everything in between. The pictures are drool-worthy (my only complaint about the book is that more pictures should be included, since many recipes don't have any accompanying photo). I have flagged dozens of recipes I'd like to try, but I started with a traditional French recipe called Spiced Honey Cake. Dorie classifies the texture of this cake as being "breadlike" or even "firm like a cookie" so I was expecting a denser cake; but my version came out almost too dense. There are no eggs in the cake at all which I thought was a typo , but I left a question on Dorie's website and she confirmed that there are no eggs in this recipe. Dorie instructs to make this in a loaf pan but I used muffin tins. I might try this cake again in a loaf pan and with a different mix of spices and dried fruits to compare the results.

1 orange
3/4 cup water
1 1"-chunk fresh ginger
1 tsp cardamom pods
1 cinnamon stick
1 tsp white peppercorns
1 tsp cloves
1-2 star anise
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1/3 cup honey
1/3 cup sugar
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 cup chopped figs

Add a fat strip of orange zest, and the various spices, to the water and bring to a boil. Cover and remove from heat to cool for one hour. Strain the spiced water and discard the solids. Stir in the honey and the melted butter.

Preheat oven to 300 degress. Grate remaining orange zest in a bowl and combine with the sugar. Rub the zest into the sugar with your fingers. Add flour and baking powder and whisk thoroughly to blend. Pour the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients, and mix everything together quickly and gently. Stir in dried fruit. Scrape batter into pan.

Bake for 60 minutes (Dorie's instructions say to bake this for 75-85 minutes but these muffins were definitely cooked through at 60 minutes, and probably a little overcooked at that point).

This cake is supposedly better a day or two after it is baked.