Home › Cakes › Almond and Honey Cakes
Almond and Honey Cakes
1 pound of flour 1 pound of honey 6 ounces of ground almonds 1 teaspoon of powdered cloves 1 1/2 teaspoons carbonate of soda 3 ounces of butter Put the honey and butter on the fire, and let it boil. Mix the flour, cloves and almonds together, and pour the boiling mixture on them. Mix the carbonate of soda in a little cold milk, and add last. Mix all well together, and let stand for five or six hours; then roll out into one inch thick rounds or squares, put a few almonds on the top, and bake till a golden brown--about fifteen minutes.
A honey-cake dough of the German Lebkuchen type, mixed hot and rested overnight in effect. Weigh the ingredients if you can — the whole thing is built on pound-for-pound proportions of flour and honey.
- The rest is the pointThe rest matters -- the hot honey mixture wants time for the flour to hydrate, and probably for the soda to begin working on the honey's acidity; cut it short and the dough will be stiffer and the baked cakes likely denser and drier. Standing overnight at room temperature, covered, does no harm.
- Weights to volumes1 pound of flour is about 3 1/2 cups; 1 pound of honey is roughly 1 1/3 cups; 6 ounces of ground almonds is about 1 1/2 cups; 3 ounces of butter is 6 tablespoons.
- Carbonate of sodaPlain baking soda. Dissolving it in a little cold milk, as directed, is worth doing — it disperses evenly instead of leaving bitter pockets. Two or three tablespoons of milk is enough.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Bake at 350F. Honey doughs brown fast and scorch on the underside, so use parchment and check at ten minutes.
- About that inchAn inch of this dough will not bake through in fifteen minutes. Roll to about 1/2 inch and expect 12 to 15 minutes; if you want them thicker, drop the oven to 325F and give them 20 to 25 minutes.
- Boiling the honeyBring honey and butter just to a boil and pour it straight onto the dry mixture. Prolonged boiling darkens honey and turns it bitter, and it will foam up suddenly, so use a pan with room.
- Almonds on topWhole blanched almonds, pressed in lightly before baking, are traditional. Press them well down or they fall off once the cakes cool and firm.
- Yield and keepingRoughly two dozen cakes of about 2 1/2 inches. They are hard the day they are baked and improve markedly after two or three days in a tin; a piece of apple in the tin keeps them yielding.
Honey cakes spiced with cloves and stiffened with ground almonds belong to a family that runs across northern Europe — German Honigkuchen and Lebkuchen, Dutch taai-taai, English gingerbread in its older, honey-sweetened form. Doughs of this kind were commonly worked hot and rested for hours or days, and some were baked hard to keep. The long stand that this recipe calls for looks like a survival of that method: honey doughs were often matured for weeks before chemical leavening came into use, and the carbonate of soda here is a later shortcut layered onto an older practice.