A delicious rich, moist honeycake, best made the day before you plan to serve it. You'd think it'd be cloyingly sweet, but it's perfect.
This recipe yields two tall 8x4" loaves, but even one loaf is far too much for a nuclear family -- this cake is best to bake for a party (or two). I tend to cut it into 12-16 slices per loaf (it slices beautifully), and then cut each slice in half, so the full recipe produces 48-64 pieces and yields around 20-30 servings. Alternatively you can bake it as 24 cupcakes.
If you want to store the cake more than a few days, you can wrap it three times in plastic and then freeze it.
| Ingredients | Step |
|---|---|
| Grease and line two 8x4" pans with parchment to create handles, and place the pans on a baking sheet to stabilize them. Fold the edges of the parchment over the sides so it can't fall into the batter (which it is very prone to do). | |
| Preheat oven to 350 degrees. | |
| 445 g (3¼ c + 2 T) flour 1¾ t. baking powder 1 t. baking soda 1 t. kosher salt 4 t. cinnamon ½ t. cloves ½ t. allspice |
Whisk together. |
| ½ c. (110 g) brown sugar 1½ c. (300 g) white sugar 1 c. (200 g) neutral oil 1 c. (320 g) honey 3 eggs 1 t. vanilla 1½ c. orange juice ¼ c. rye or whiskey |
Add to well in center of dry ingredients, then slowly stir together to make a well-blended batter, pausing to scrape as needed. |
| Slowly and carefully pour into prepared pans. The batter will be runny, and that's okay! Place in the preheated oven to bake. | |
| Bake until a cake tester can be removed cleanly at multiple spots (and make sure to test multiple places). It might take anywhere from 40 minutes to 60 minutes for the cakes to bake, depending on their density. They will look runny, then increasingly puffy and cooked, and it will take a while past looking totally cooked for them to actually be totally cooked. |
Source: Deb Perelman (Smitten Kitchen), originally from Marcy Goldman's Treasure of Jewish Holiday Baking