Happy belated new year to those who celebrate.
Last week, the Internet was rife with recipes for Honey Cake to celebrate Rosh Hashanha. Some of the postings were ebullient paens to the cake and its spicy flavors.
I couldn’t resist and selected a recipe from Smitten Kitchen’s Deb Pearlman. You can find the original recipe here. The praise for that recipe was particularly effusive.
As I put the batter together, I was impressed by the long list of interesting ingredients that go into making the cake–everything from a quarter cup of bourbon to coffee and allspice. In the end, as I whisked the final ingredients into the batter I had a few moments of doubt. I was dealing with a very liquid batter. Could this possibly work? I rechecked my ingredient list. I checked the recipe against Ina Garten’s recipe for the same cake. Everything checked out and I slid my loaf pans (the recipe makes two generous loaves of the cake) into my oven.
Forty-five minutes later, I had a delicious moist cake. Who knew?
Honey Cake
Ingredients
- 3 1/4 C. plus 2 T. all-purpose flour
- 1 3/4 t. baking powder
- 1 t. baking soda
- 1 t. kosher salt
- 4 t. ground cinnamon
- 1/2 t. ground cloves
- 1/2 t. ground allspice
- 1 C. vegetable oil
- 1 C. honey
- 1 1/2 C. granulated sugar
- 1/2 C. dark brown sugar
- 3 large eggs
- 1 t. vanilla extract
- 1 C. warm coffee
- 1/2 C. fresh orange juice
- 1/4 C. whiskey
Directions
- Step 1 Prepare two loaf pans by greasing them and lining them with a sheet of parchment that overhangs the sides of the loaf pan. The overhang will come in handy as handles to remove your finished cake from the pan.
- Step 2 To prepare the batter, whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice together. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and add oil, honey, granulated sugar, brown sugar, eggs, vanilla, coffee, juice and bourbon whiskey. Mix in your stand electric mixer if you have one. This is a loose batter! Pour your batter into the two prepared loaf pans.
- Step 3 Bake the cake in a preheated 350 degree F. oven for 45-55 minutes. Your cake is done when a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.
- Step 4 Cool the cake on the counter for at least 15 minutes.
- Step 5 Cook’s Note: The flavor of the spices in this cake are enhanced as this cake ages. It is at its peak on days two and three but, because it is so moist, it stays great longer than that. I served my cake with a scoop of the best vanilla ice cream I could find (Nancy Silverton’s Nancy’s Fancy Bourbon Vanilla–a gift from my good friend Debbie) and a couple of ripe figs.
