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Passover Honey Cake

Growing up in a Jewish home I was always made acutely aware of how important good food was—is—at any occasion. Even the post-funeral gatherings we call “sitting shiva” are excuses to pull out the good napkins. That’s why I am always mystified by my people’s willingness to put up with bad food on Passover. The excuse is always that you cannot cook with “chametz”, the umbrella word describing ingredients that are not allowed on Passover. This usually refers to anything bread or flour related, and any kind of leavening, but the actual rule bans things made from wheat, barley, oats, rye, or spelt. The only wheat product allowed is matzo and what I lovingly refer to as its derivatives: matzo that has been ground, crumbled, or otherwise processed so that it can be used in other recipes.

There is such a thing as Passover Baking Soda, which confuses me because I thought the purpose of the Passover holiday was to commemorate bread not being allowed to rise. Passover Baking Soda’s loophole? No cornstarch.

From a baker’s point of view it’s kind of like being told that you must substitute breadcrumbs for flour.

Generations of commercial kosher bakers have been putting their kids through Harvard and Yale just by selling Passover desserts to even the most unobservant Jews (hello) who have always been willing to pay for Passover-compliant cakes and cookies. Here’s the problem: a lot of it just isn’t very good, especially the supermarket brands. A lot of it is also…shall we say, “premium-priced.”

Apologies to the folks who produce the supermarket Passover stuff (and to their well-educated progeny), but a cake that has been sitting in a box for an unknown amount of time has a few strikes against it.

Is it heresy for me to complain? All I want is a good piece of cake, for goodness sake.

Luckily, I’m handy in the kitchen and have figured out a few tricks that result in desserts that aren’t just good for Passover, they’re good anytime of the year. Last year I made a Northern Italian-style Torta di Mandorla per la Pasqua, a chocolate, almond, egg white torte. I actually served it before Passover to a group of non-Jewish friends who loved it, and remains one of my favorite recipes. (It is very light so perfect for summer.)

This year I decided to re-visit the Grandmother of all Jewish Holiday desserts: Honey Cake. When I was a kid with (I’m guessing) a much less discerning palate, my presence at any event could be secured with the promise of honey cake. The typical honey cake comes in a loaf, usually encased in (don’t get me started) a disposable aluminum pan. To my adult palette though, honey cake always tastes a bit syrupy, and manages to be both too dry and too sodden. Not sure how that’s possible.

Blame science. In baking, the type of flour, its grind, the kind of wheat used, and how the milled flour has been treated are some of the things that rule how a cake gelatinizes (mixes with liquid then bakes into a solid). Passover Cake meal is basically powdered Matzo and has its own rule book, but it is easy to predict that this ingredient will lend density to a cake. The usual trick has always been to lighten the cake meal in a way that imitates traditional cake flour. This is usually accomplished by adding potato starch. The results vary according to the other ingredients in the cake. In the case of honey you end up with a wet, damp cake because honey is hygroscopic: it actually pulls moisture in even when baked.

Okay, I promise: no more science. But the takeaway here is: use too much honey and you’ll have a damp, heavy cake. Too little, your cake is dry. Just the right amount and you’ll have a cake that works at staying fresh. The question is: what can you add that will give the cake a true “crumb”, texture that makes a cake feel like a cake when you take a bite?

For the answer you can thank the current popularity of macarons, the colorful French-style almond macaroons. I have been trying to learn to make them (they’re tricky) and have a bag of almond flour sitting in my refrigerator. Almond flour is just the man for the job: it will mix well with the Passover Cake Meal to make a nice crumb and is Passover-friendly on its own.

Using almond flour in cake is certainly nothing new. Europeans have been baking with it for generations. So taking a cue from a French Galette, the simple round torte, I called my Springform pan into service.

The beauty of my concept was that with the honey and almond flour I already had two very flavorful ingredients. A couple of more layers of flavor would be ideal, so I used a delicate sprinkle of orange zest, and a not so delicate dash of frozen concentrated orange juice whose character would slightly overlap the honey while adding a sunny note of its own. A little cocoa powder and vanilla extract would bring some perfumed but earthy notes to the cake.

The result has the slight chewy crumb of a galette and a delicate honeyed sweetness that some may find reminiscent of the desserts the Spanish Sephardic Jews favor.

No disposable aluminum loaf pans required…or allowed.

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Click here for the recipe for Passover Honey Cake.

Click here for the recipe for Torta di Mandorla per la Pasqua.

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Write to me at the email address below with any questions or thoughts you may have. Thanks!

Let me email you when the blog has been updated! Opt in by clicking the biscotti at right or by sending your email address to michael@butterfloureggs.com

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I couldn't wait. I started without you. Sorry.

It shouldn’t surprise you that I define holidays by the anticipated food, not unlike the way a teenager weighs where to spend Saturday night based on which friends they expect to see at which party. (“Omigod, Heather will TOTALLY be there!”)

The difference is that I divide holiday food into two categories. Category One: holiday food that I love. Category Two: holiday food that I tolerate due to nostalgia. At no time are these two categories more distinct than during Passover, the Jewish holiday that celebrates the Jews’ escape from slavery in ancient Egypt.

Here’s the deal: Passover food is a challenge game. Make anything you want, just make sure there’s nothing leavened. If you’re really strict (and I’m not), anything that is allowed to bake too long and puff up too much – even if it does not contain yeast, baking powder, or baking soda – will leave you out of compliance with the rules. The Rabbis who supervise the official baking of Passover matzo will force the bakers to discard a batch if it stays in the oven too long.

Flour? Sorry, no. The various Passover flours are versions of ground matzo. Some smell like wet paper when used in a recipe, also a challenge.

Some folks may find this sacrilege, but to me matzo is like Christmas. It should only happen once a year. I love them both, but any more than an annual visit and you wouldn’t appreciate them. The novelty is in the nostalgia value. I was probably 10 years old the last time I ate my Grandmother’s Passover Potato Kugel, and I can still taste its greasy, salty, goodness. But I’m a realist: I know that if I ate her Potato Kugel now, the word “agita” would get a sweaty workout. (My Nana was many things, but good cook was not one of them. I don’t remember her ever baking anything, but she did open a mean box of cookies.) (Sorry Nana.)

You get the point. Speaking solely for me, the main appeal of Passover food is its once-a-year novelty. The frustration is that those of us who enjoy baking and cooking and are spoiled by the fresh simplicity of the great stuff we make all through the year have a tough time eating macaroons from can. Or worse.

I think the answer can be found in a sort of a recipe for Passover recipes. The ingredients are big flavors, lots of texture, minimize the ground matzo, and find stuff that you would gladly eat and serve to anyone at any time of the year.

A while ago I remember seeing a cake baked on TV that was rustic and what I imagined to be typical of what you’d find if you’d been invited to dinner at a farm in cooler Northern Italy. It was a hazelnut cake that contained mostly ground nuts, sugar, and egg whites. That seemed like a good place to start. (I think with food it is always hard to goof if you start with Italian.)

I googled “Piedmont Nut Cake” and found “Torta di Nocciola,” which is indeed a traditional cake from that alpine region. A little tinkering would be needed to suit my needs. Well, one big tinker: I needed to find an elegant way to include a generous dose of chocolate with the cake. My sister-in-law is hosting our family Seder this year. If I arrive without chocolate in hand I will be turned away at the door. Naturally I am happy to comply with this requirement.

The basic recipe isn’t that far from Angel Food Cake. Whipped egg whites supply the loft; the only fat is whatever is in the ground nuts. Usually when you want to add chocolate to Angel Food cake you fold in ground chocolate as cocoa powder requires a lot of mixing which could deflate the egg whites. Why not apply the same principal to my Piedmontese Passover cake?

One stumble on the way to the altar: I couldn’t find hazelnuts anywhere. Channeling my inner Alice Waters, I grabbed what was fresh and available: whole raw almonds. (Use nuts with the brown skin still on. They’ll dot the cake with their earthy flecks.)

The resulting cake has a large-crumbed dampness that is usually missing in Passover cake. The egg whites reveal themselves in the cake’s snappy crust. The cake feels light, but beware its deceptive richness. The chocolate and the almonds skip hand in hand; a well-known match made in heaven. The almonds were actually a better choice in this version of the cake. The gods of baking were obviously smiling on me when they forced me to substitute almonds for hazelnuts.

All that was left was to test the cake on some unsuspecting victims to prove that it could be more than just a Passover dessert.

A tiny group of us met for dinner a few nights ago. I arrived, Piedmontese cake in hand, with visions of the old “We’ve replaced their gourmet brewed coffee with Folgers’s Instant Coffee” TV commercial dancing in my head. Fortunately our host was making pasta. As dessert rolled around I tried to act casual but failed. Yes, they loved the cake, but there was no equivalent of the “This is instant coffee? Really??” moment from the old commercial. I kept saying, “It’s a Passover cake!” They kept eating. Couldn’t have cared less.

Oh well, you take success where you can get it.

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Click here for my recipe for Torta di Mandorla per La Pasqua (Passover Almond Tort)

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Write to me at the email address below with any thoughts you may have. Thanks!

Let me email you when the blog has been updated! Opt in by clicking the biscotti at right or by sending your email address to michael@butterfloureggs.com