On Friday mornings I usually bake a fruit pie or some kind of cake or cupcakes for dessert to close off Friday-night dinner. I often ask what my husband would prefer to have and just as often as I ask he doesn't really know. Favourites are occasionally suggested like raisin-cinnamon rolls or apple pie. This time, though, he had seen a recipe published in the Lifestyle section of our local paper for honeycake, and that brought back memories of childhood and he said, why not bake one, it's been such a long time?

So I agreed. And altered the recipe slightly to include a little bit of coffee left over from breakfast, cinnamon, slivered almonds, raisins, and hot-candied ginger that I cut into tiny slivers with a very small pair of scissors (those folding scissors that were available on the market from China, years ago).

When the cake batter was finished it went into the prepared pan, and then into our pre-heated counter-top convection oven, which gets a lot more of a workout than our conventional stove-oven, particularly during the summer months. Though today officially marks the onset of fall, it is a warm, humid day, perfect for the convection oven.

It's a far more efficient way to bake things since less time is required to produce a very good final product. Except that, on this occasion, the efficiency it is noted for ended up browning the top of the cake before the interior was sufficiently baked. Necessitating that the oven temperature be reduced and the top of the cake loosely shielded with a sheet of aluminum foil so the cake could bake through thoroughly.

Excellent end product.