Honey Cake

Honey Cake

(Lekach)

Two New Recipes

Blue Heron Kitchen

If you’re as serious about honey cake as I am, you're going to cheer for these two fantastic, delicious, memorable and important recipes. I can’t decide which I like better. They’re comparable in quality but are as different as Brooklyn and Queens. I think I know which cake I love more (today), but like kids, each different, equally loved. This year, it’s one of the earliest Jewish New Years ever (the 5^th of September!). Jewish holidays are never “on time”. You're gonna plotz when you find out when the first night of Hanukah is. 

First: two excellent Jewish baking resources for you: A Treasury of Jewish Holiday Baking by Marcy Goldman, and Inside the Jewish Bakery by Stanley Ginsberg and Norman Berg.

Now, the poop on lekach: honey cake has a bad rep. It’s always on the dessert table because it has to be there; and everyone has to say they hate it.

These recipes will convert nonbelievers and have them swarming around your dessert table.

Okay, let’s lekach!

“Majestic and Moist New Year’s Honey Cake”

From Marcy Goldman’s A Treasury of Jewish Holiday Baking

Adapted by Blue Heron Kitchen

Goldman’s fifteen-year-old book is a home-baker-friendly resource. I found a used copy on Amazon in perfect condition (first edition!)

She writes, “I like a New Year's honey cake to be extra moist and sweet, as good on the day of baking as it is days later. This one is queen of the realm—rich, nicely spiced, in a word, majestic in taste and stature. I went through many variations and tasting sessions until I was satisfied with this definitive cake. One tester gave the ultimate compliment, saying "This one is worth the price of the book." Like most honey cakes, it is a good keeper and can be made a couple of days ahead.” (Translation: it keeps well and you should make it several days ahead because it’ll taste better.)

This cake is a majestic cake. It’s tall, golden and moist. It’s light in texture, and the addition of alcohol makes it one of the most elegant honey cakes I’ve tasted.

Ingredients:

3½ c. all-purpose flour

1 Tbsp. baking powder (I suggest Rumford’s aluminum-free)

1 tsp. baking soda

½ tsp. kosher salt

4 tsp. ground cinnamon

½ tsp. ground cloves

½ tsp. ground allspice

1 c. vegetable oil (I use Canola, whatever you use, make sure it’s odorless .. fresh)

1 c. honey (for this cake, I use Golden Blossom brand honey)

1 ½ cups granulated sugar

½ cup brown sugar (be sure that it’s fresh and moist)

3 eggs, size large, at room temperature

1 tsp. pure vanilla extract (I always use Baldwins!)

1 c. warm coffee or strong tea (I used PG Tips tea one time and Nespresso another)

½ c. fresh orange juice (if you don’t squeeze your own, use the best quality you can buy)

1/4 cup rye or whisky (I used Makers Mark Bourbon) or,  *without alcohol, see below*

½ c. slivered or sliced almonds (optional – please see note at end of recipe)

Procedure:

Equipment:  9-inch angel food cake pan (best) or 10-inch tube or Bundt cake pan, a 9 x 13-inch sheet pan, or three 8 x 4 1/2-inch loaf pans.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Rack in center of oven. Lightly grease the pan(s). For tube and angel food pans, line the bottom with lightly greased parchment paper. 

(it's easy, trace it on the bottom)

For gift honey cakes you might want to get some paper loaf molds (available on amazon.com) and then wrap them in clear cellophane or pop one into a clear cellophane bag.

This cake is “mis-en-place” (“in place and ready for action) perfect. Measure everything out in five vessels (or less) and you’re done. Lightly oil your large (1 qt.) liquid measuring cup and begin with oil, then add honey, followed by orange juice and whisky. Then dump in the eggs and vanilla. Have the sugars measured out. The dry ingredients have been whisked together in the large bowl. Easy. You’re a pro!

If making this by hand, use a large bowl. Using an electric mixer (KA) use its bowl and whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices.

Make a well in the center         

and add the oil, honey, sugars, eggs, vanilla, coffee, orange juice, and alcohol.

Using a strong wire whisk or Kitchen Aid or ‘other’ electric mixer on slow (KA2) speed, combining the ingredients well to make a liquid batter, making sure that all ingredients are incorporated (use a spatula to bring the bottom up to the top.)

Spoon, ladle or pour the batter into the prepared pan(s) and if you’re using nuts, sprinkle them on top of the cake(s) evenly. Place the cake pan(s) on a 2 baking sheets stacked together and bake until the cake springs back when you touch it gently in the center. For angel and tube cake pans, bake for 60 to 70 minutes; loaf cakes, 40 to 55 minutes. For sheet-style cakes, the baking time is 40 to 45 minutes. Cake should spring back when gently pressed.

Let the cake stand for 15 minutes before removing it from the pan. Then invert it onto a wire rack to cool completely. If making this by hand, use a large bowl.

Truc: If you don’t have time to let the cake cool (bedtime?) if the cakes are warm (please, NOT hot), drape a cotton tea towel over them, go wash your face, floss and brush; and in the morning, wrap them up. They’ll keep for days (the taste will improve). You can refrigerate them, but bring to room temperature before serving.

Serves 10-12 

*If you prefer not to use alcohol, replace with orange juice or coffee

Note: In general, garnishing a cake with an ingredient that isn’t inside is confusing, sloppy and deceptive. Slivered almonds scattered on top of honey cake taste good. So much for generalizations.

9.13.13 This just in!

My nephew sent this photo of his innovative version, albeit unorthodox (even better!). He baked the honey cake and layered it with a honey-cinnamon buttercream, crowned with sliced almonds. It was a hit at his office, but since his office is in Australia, it was gone before I could get a slice. Looks great, Jacob!

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Honey Cake (Lekach)

From Inside the Jewish Bakery by Stanley Ginsberg and Norman Berg

Adapted by Blue Heron Kitchen

The Ginsberg/Berg book is fascinating reading for anyone who grew up eating “Jewish Bakery” (If you can eat “Jewish Deli”, why not “Jewish Bakery”?). The book is a great read, with interesting anecdotes about Eastern European Jewish tradition (Yiddishkeit), scholarly references and a peek inside the obsolete family-owned Jewish bakeries of New York. When you buy the book, get the published “errata” online. Print corrections out and keep them in the book. A mitzvah, those corrections.

These cakes bake for 2 to 2 ½ hours (no kidding) at 225º F. Truc: make sure these are fully baked or you will have sink holes, lines down the middle, instead of crowning loaves. Nobody will talk about you if you bake them at 250º.

What I found intriguing about Stanley and Norman’s honey cake is that it calls for white  rye (no wheat) flour and dark (buckwheat) honey. They write: “Virtually all honey cake recipes in print today call for wheat flour. This recipe uses white rye flour, which was the highest quality flour available in Eastern Europe to all but the very wealthy. …And unlike wheat, which dries out over time, rye, like honey, absorbs water from the atmosphere, so that this cake gets better day by day”.

You can find “White” or “Light” Rye flour online. Order it now. If you’re an Amazon Prime member, you’ll have it day after tomorrow. Here are some links: I bought Bob’s Red Mill on amazon.com because the shipping was cheaper than buying directly from Bob’s Red Mill – sorry Bob. You have to buy a case (four 2-pound bags). The expiration date is a couple of years out. Hopefully, you’ll be inscribed in The Book of Life, and you’ll use it next year (or live in the moment and make a rye bread.) It’s also available directly from Bob’s Red Mill and King Arthur Flour sells it. I doubled this recipe because after going through the trouble to find the rye flour, I wanted to use it. (Important: If you double the recipe, you’ll need a 6-quart Kitchen Aid, or just do it by hand.) Please don’t inquire about substituting dark rye flour. If you do and it works, don’t tell me.

The cake has no orange juice, no extracts, no alcohol or warm “strong” coffee or tea. It’s a no frills commercial (“cummoischul”) bakery recipe, an unusual and extraordinary honey cake. It’s toothsome and with a cup of coffee or a “gleyzele tey” (glass of tea), this cake will make you feel like you’re sitting in your bubbie’s kitchen. (What I wouldn’t give…)

Grandma Rae

Ingredients:

¾ c. brown sugar, firmly packed

1/3 tsp. kosher salt

1/3 c. beaten egg (about 1 ½ size large)

11/3 c. buckwheat (dark) honey* (If you can’t get dark honey, substitute 1.5 oz./40 gr. unsulphered molasses for same quantity of honey.)

½ tsp. ground cinnamon

½ tsp. ground cloves

½ tsp. ground allspice

2/3 c. water (room temperature)

1 ½ tsp. baking soda

4 ½ c. (1 pound) White or “Light” rye flour

1-2 cups whole, sliced or slivered nuts (optional - refer to my "Note" above about optional nuts.)

you'll be astonished at how much honey's left when you turn it upside down

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 225º F./105º C., rack in center of oven. Grease and flour or line with parchment the bottom of two 8 ½ x 4 ½ in./22x12cm. loaf pans.

In bowl of an electric mixer, combine brown sugar, salt, egg, oil, honey and spices and mix using flat paddle beater at low-medium (KA 4) for 6-7 minutes until well blended.

Add baking soda and water and continue to mix until blended.

Add the white (light) rye flour, one cup at a time, blending each addition before adding the next cup. Continue to beat for about 10 minutes. The batter will be loose, stringy and quite sticky.

Pour the batter into the prepared pans and if using, top with nuts.

Bake for 2 to 2 ½ hours (or, if necessary, longer – until tester comes out clean.) Be sure cakes are fully baked before removing from oven (or you’ll have a sunken lines down the middle and forgive me, wet spots.)

Remove to a rack and let cool for 15 - 20 minutes. Run a sharp knife along sides of pan to ease release. Invert, turn back up and cool on racks, completely.

Wrap well and let the cakes ‘season’ for at least one day.

peace and love,

jane