Pão de mel is an indulgent, jazzy version of the traditional treat.
Many honey cake recipes are dry and bland, so I have adapted Brazilian pão de mel (honey bread) for a jazzy, indulgent version of our traditional treat. This is a dark and decadent sandwich honey cake, filled with dulce de leche and enrobed in dark chocolate. The dulce de leche inspires my hopes of a rich and generous new year to come.
I prefer not to use regular chocolate to enrobe Pão de Mel, since it’s too big a cake to bite into hard chocolate. The chocolate glaze has to be quite thin to make a beautiful coating. What I recommend here is to use baker’s dipping chocolate (the kind you dip strawberries into). It’s not pure chocolate; it is mixed with vegetable fat. In the past, many pastry chefs looked at dipping chocolate with disdain, but chocolate brands have improved so much on their products that if you use a high quality baker’s chocolate, even their dipping chocolate is fantastic, to the point that you could never tell that is not pure chocolate. I use a brand called Felchlin. Feel free to use other gourmet chocolate brands. If it comes in pistols, you don’t even need to chop it.