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Honey and Almond Cakes
a Put into a saucepan two cupfuls of liquid honey with three-fourths pound of powdered Cook two or three minutes , add a sugar.. quarter pound of almonds chopped and cook five minutes longer. Now add enough flour to make a stiff dough. Take from the fire, and when slightly cooled, add eight ounces of candied orange peel, cut fine, the yellow rind of a lemon, a half teaspoonful each of ground cinnamon and grated nutmeg, a half teaspoonful of soda, a pinch of salt and a and a glass of grape juice. While the dough is still warm, roll thin and stamp into little rectangles. Bake in a moderate oven and when cold, ice.
This is a lebkuchen-style honey dough: a cooked honey-sugar syrup stirred into flour, spiced, and baked as thin rectangles. The proportions are given by weight and volume in the older manner, and the flour is left entirely to the cook's judgement.
- The hinge: flour by feel, not by numberNo flour quantity is given because the dough is judged by stiffness while hot. Expect roughly 4 to 5 cups (500-625 g) for this quantity of syrup; add it in stages until the mass pulls away from the spoon but is still pliable. Too much and the cakes bake hard as boards.
- Moderate oven350F (175C). Thin honey doughs colour quickly because of the sugar, so check at 8-10 minutes; they should be set and lightly browned at the edges, still soft in the middle.
- Weights and measuresThree-fourths pound of powdered sugar is 12 oz, roughly 1 3/4 cups if it is the fine granulated sugar of the period; a quarter pound of almonds is 4 oz, about 3/4 to 1 cup chopped. A "glass" of grape juice in books of this period is often taken as about a half cup, though the term is imprecise.
- Powdered sugarIn American books of this era "powdered" usually means a fine granulated sugar rather than the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold now. Ordinary granulated or caster sugar is the closer match here, since it is being dissolved in hot honey anyway.
- Soda in a hot mixtureThe half teaspoonful of soda goes in only after the dough has cooled somewhat, as directed. Stirring it into boiling syrup wastes the lift and leaves a soapy note; the acidity of the honey and grape juice is what it reacts with.
- Rolling while warmThis dough stiffens to near-unworkable as it cools. Roll it out thin, as directed, while it is still comfortably warm -- between sheets of parchment if it sticks -- cut the rectangles, and transfer them before the sheet sets.
- The icingNo icing is specified. A common finish is a thin water glaze - confectioners' sugar slackened with a little lemon juice or hot water - brushed over the cakes once cold so it dries to a matte white film.
- Yield and keepingThis makes a large batch, likely several dozen small cakes. Honey cakes generally improve after several days in a closed tin; a slice of apple in the tin is a traditional way of keeping them from hardening.
Honey doughs of this kind - honey and sugar cooked together, thickened with flour, loaded with almonds, candied peel and warm spice - descend from the German Lebkuchen and the Nuremberg gingerbread trade, which is often said to have begun with medieval monastic bakers who had access to both honey and imported spice. The style travelled to America with German settlers and turns up in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century household books under names like honey cakes, honey jumbles and spice cakes. These were keeping cakes, made in a large batch and stored in a tin against unexpected callers, a domestic virtue much stressed in manuals written for new housekeepers.