Kue Lapis is a product of Indonesia’s Dutch colonial heritage. It is a spice cake that is grilled in layers, spiced mixture alternating with plain to form a striped pattern in the cut cake. In Holland, where Indonesian food enjoys much the same status that Indian food does in Britain, and for much the same reason, it is popularly referred to as spekkoek, or ‘bacon cake’, because the stripes give the impression of very streaky bacon (see picture on p. 131). Recipes of various types have appeared in standard Dutch cookery books and one of the most remarkable versions I have ever seen is from an 1899 book written by the principal of the Hague Cookery School, in which she stipulates a whole nutmeg and 65 cloves for a cake twice the size of the one below. Nowadays in Holland, most people prefer to buy a slice at a time from an Indonesian food outlet or grocer, where it is usually sold by weight. This has less to do with frugality than richness: a little goes a long way.
This kind of layered cake is also made industrially in Indonesia and sold in small prepackaged blocks. Flavours vary from spices to jackfruit, screwpine (pandan) and more. Ever curious, I decided to sample a few. It was a huge disappointment, as there was little difference in flavour between them and I was left with a very chemical aftertaste. I wasn’t surprised to read on the package that the cakes could be kept for at least another year! No doubt there are better brands, but I have yet to find them. You’re better off buying a piece from an Indonesian food shop, but of course, best off if you make it yourself. It is quite easy to make, although you have to remain on the spot while grilling. Before you know it, you’ll be finished, especially if, like me, you take a childlike pleasure in watching the cake grow before your eyes.
This cake has a modest eight layers and the spiced layers contrast deliciously with the baked egg custard-like taste of the plain layer, a combination of flavours that led a friend to remark cryptically that it tasted of her childhood. And the cake does seem to appeal to children, even when they have looked past the intriguing stripes. When they were very young, my children came up with their own serving preference: they liked vanilla-flavoured custard poured over it.
Serve this in small slices. The cake keeps for more than a week, well wrapped, in a cool place.
Do give yourself enough time: the layering alone can take up to 45 minutes, after the batter has been prepared.
You will need a grill (broiler) for this recipe.
250 g/9 oz/2¼ sticks butter, softened
200 g/7 oz/1 cup caster (superfine) sugar (in two portions of 100 g/3½ oz/½ cup)
5 eggs, separated
1 tsp vanilla extract
125 g/4½ oz/scant 1 cup plain (all-purpose) flour
¼ tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp ground cardamom
⅛ tsp ground cloves
⅛ tsp freshly grated nutmeg
50 g/1¾ oz/scant ½ stick melted butter, for brushing
20-cm/8-in round tin
Beat the butter until smooth. Add 100 g/3½ oz/½ cup caster sugar and cream until light and fluffy. Add the egg yolks and vanilla extract and beat well to incorporate.
Sift the flour with the salt and set aside.
In a scrupulously clean bowl, using a clean whisk or beater, whisk the egg whites until foaming. Pour the remaining caster sugar in a slow but steady stream onto the whites while still whisking. Continue whisking until stiff peaks hold their shape. Add a generous spoonful of the whites to the creamed mixture and mix well. Gently fold in the rest of the egg whites in three batches, alternating with the flour. Do not overmix.
Transfer half of the mixture to another bowl. Carefully fold the spices into the contents of one bowl. Spread a quarter of the contents of one bowl over the bottom of the greased baking tin and level it off with a plastic scraper.
Place the tin under a hot grill (broiler) and grill (broil) until the top is puffy and the batter cooked through. The first layer always seems to take a little longer, perhaps about 5 minutes, depending on how close it is to the heat source. Remove the tin from the grill, then brush with butter and add another layer.
Each subsequent layer will take about 3 minutes – they will be puffed up and golden brown and should be cooked through. You should have a total of eight layers. Always be sure to spread the batter evenly and to wipe any spills off the side of the tin. Spills tend to burn and drop into the batter, spoiling the appearance and taste of the finished cake. When you have grilled all of the layers, carefully loosen the edges and turn onto a wire cooling rack.
Pictured on p. 131.
One day, my parents announced that we were going away on holiday. To us Guyanese children in those days, ‘away’ meant abroad, so this was very exciting news. When I asked where we were going, I was told that we would be island-hopping in the West Indies. My seven-year-old mind grappled with these facts and they soon coalesced into a somewhat hazy image of a blue-green sea dotted with several bits of land, with us jumping from one to the other whenever we felt like moving on. A bit like that game I played with my friends, only we jumped across a wide ditch filled with muddy water into which we occasionally tumbled, emerging covered from head to toe with slime and the odd tadpole, forcing us to reluctantly slink off home to face parental retribution. Common sense soon prevailed and I realized that going away involved planes, airports and hotels, all great novelties to my sister and me. It was to be my only trip to Grenada, but my first impression has remained securely tucked into a tiny crevice of my mind. As we left the chilly aircraft cabin and descended the short flight of steps onto the tarmac, I was enveloped in a blanket of warm and fragrant air. Though I didn’t know it at the time, the exotic yet comfortingly familiar perfume was nutmeg wafting from the surrounding groves and storage sheds nearby. The air smelled so delicious, it felt like you could open your mouth and eat it, and ever since then Grenada and nutmegs have become synonymous to me.
Nutmeg (Myristica fragrans) lives up to the promise of its name in being one of the most fragrant of spices. The English word comes to us by way of the old French nois muguede, in its turn derived from the Vulgar Latin nuce muscata, an unmistakable reference to its musky perfume.
The nutmeg tree is native to the Banda Islands, a group of islands in the eastern part of the Malay archipelago. These 10 small volcanic islands now form part of the Indonesian province of Maluku (Moluccas). Nutmegs were used in ancient Persia and had reached Constantinople by at least the ninth century AD. Journeying further westwards, the precious spice spread to Europe by the twelfth century, and cautiously began to infiltrate local cuisines. Only in the sixteenth century, when the Portuguese reached the Moluccas and established a trade route round the Cape of Good Hope, did the spice begin to reach Europe in significant quantities.
The Portuguese monopoly was broken a century later by the Dutch, who seized control and anxiously sought to retain it by destroying existent plantations on other neighbouring islands, and allowing cultivation only under their highly vigilant eye. The strategy worked well for more than 150 years until the French managed to sneak a few plants to Mauritius in 1770 and subsequently started their own production. During their brief occupation of the Moluccas from 1796 to 1802, the British began to plant nutmeg trees in their colonies as far away as the West Indies, and the nutmeg reached Grenada in the 1860s. As in the Moluccas, the trees were planted near the sea in volcanic soil and the tropical climate was similar. Nutmegs soon grew as well there as in their place of origin, and today Grenada is a noteworthy producer of high-quality nutmegs.
The hard brown nut is actually the seed of a golden-coloured fleshy fruit that is a thing of beauty in itself, especially when cut open to reveal the seed wrapped in a lacy red covering. This red lace turns orange as it dries and becomes mace, prized as an aromatic in its own right. Some of the Asian countries that cultivate nutmegs also find good use for the outer fruit. In Sri Lanka, jam is made from it; and in some parts of Indonesia, it is crystallized (candied) by mixing it with palm sugar and drying it in the sun. A similar sweet appears to have been known in Europe in the past; it was sold by apothecaries in Elizabethan times as a tasty titbit with great nutritional value.
Many cuisines use nutmeg as the perfect flavouring for milk-based desserts and drinks. In Europe it is also used in savoury cooking and you will find it in a variety of vegetables as well as mashed potatoes and meatballs. It is greatly under-used in Western cakes, forming at the most a component for spice cake mixtures.
This cake is my slightly more sophisticated take on a childhood favourite. It can be served as it is or, even better, with a rum syrup, and the flavour improves after a day or so. This is easy and quick if made without syrup. The syruped loaf should be left for a day before cutting.
175 g/6 oz/scant 1¼ cups plain (all-purpose) flour
1½ tsp baking powder
⅛ tsp salt
¼ nutmeg, freshly grated (about 1 loose tsp)
125 g/4½ oz/generous 1 stick butter, softened
125 g/4½ oz/generous ½ cup (solidly packed) soft light brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 tbsp milk
4 tbsp prepared sugar syrup (see p. 273),
mixed with 2 tbsp rum
Preheat the oven to 160˚C/325˚F/Gas Mark 3. Grease the tin, line the base and dust with flour.
Sift the flour with the baking powder, salt and nutmeg and set aside.
Beat the butter until smooth. Add the sugar and beat until light and fluffy.
Whisk the eggs loosely in a small bowl and add the vanilla extract. Add the egg to the butter mixture in two batches, beating well and scraping down the sides of the bowl after each addition. Use a whisk as you would a spoon to fold in the flour mixture in three batches, alternating with the milk.
Transfer to the prepared tin and bake for 40–45 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.
Remove the tin from the oven and pierce it all the way down to the bottom in several places with the skewer. Slowly pour the rum syrup over the surface of the cake. Let it cool for about 5 minutes in the tin, then transfer it, right side up, to a wire rack to cool completely.
When the cake has cooled completely, wrap it well in clingfilm (plastic wrap) and keep it for a day before cutting it, to allow the flavours to mature.
The coming of the Portuguese to Guyana added another thread to the colony’s chequered fabric. They came as indentured labourers, like the Indians and Chinese, and were brought from Madeira and the Azores to help fill the labour void created in the sugar industry by emancipation.
This spice cake is a Guyanese–Portuguese Christmas speciality and the recipe was given to me by a friend of my mother’s, whose family bake it for special occasions. It is the kind of cake that defies categorization and usually starts discussions as to whether it really is a cake or more of a sweet. One thing, however, is certain. It is the essence of the Guyanese spirit – generous, the ingredients being put together in what can only be described as happy proportions.
The cake is very easy to make, even for the novice baker. The only thing to watch out for is the three-day resting time for the dough. If you have read the method and are anxious to check every day to see the dough gently bubbling away like a sourdough, don’t hold your breath. Nothing happens. The method owes more to the Guyanese penchant for leaving things to ‘set’ rather than to any coherent principle. Having said that, the extra maturation time does give a lovely mellowness to the cake. This recipe will make two cakes and is the ideal for serving to large groups of guests or for giving away. It is very easily halved for small households. The cakes are even better if left to mature for a few days and will keep for a few weeks if stored in a cold place to prevent the butter from turning rancid.
600 g/1 lb 5 oz/4 cups plain (all-purpose) flour
300 g/10½ oz/1½ cups (solidly packed) soft brown sugar
14 g/½ oz easy-blend yeast
2 tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp ground cloves
½ tsp finely ground black pepper
½ tsp ground ginger
1½ tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
500 g/1 lb 2 oz/scant 4½ sticks butter, melted and cooled slightly
200 g/7 oz/generous ½ cup dark treacle (molasses), warmed
100 g/3½ oz/scant ⅓ cup honey, warmed
200 g/7 oz/1⅓ cups blanched almonds, chopped
400 g/14 oz/4 cups walnuts, chopped
75 g/2¾ oz/scant ½ cup mixed candied peel
2 x 24-cm/9-in round tins
In a large bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, yeast, spices and bicarbonate of soda. Add the butter, dark treacle and honey. Knead the dough until everything is well mixed. Cover the bowl with a tea towel (dish towel) and leave at cool room temperature for 2–3 days.
Preheat the oven to 180˚C/350˚F/Gas Mark 4.
Grease the tins and line with baking parchment.
Knead the nuts and candied peel into the dough. Divide into two pieces and flatten each piece into a baking tin. Smooth the tops, moistening your hand with a little water if necessary.
Bake in the preheated oven for 25–35 minutes, or until the mixture is cooked through. Remove from the oven and leave to cool to lukewarm in the tins, then transfer carefully to a wire rack.
Once the cakes have cooled completely, wrap well in clingfilm (plastic wrap) to store, or keep in an airtight container.
A German price table dated 1393 shows that a pound of ginger had the same value as a sheep and a pound of saffron the value of a horse; a cow could be bought for the equivalent of two pounds of mace and a single pound of nutmeg changed hands for the price of seven fat oxen. After the Dutch East India Company was founded in 1602, the Dutch grasped the spice trade and firmly held on to it for almost two centuries. With shiploads of spices coming in at regular intervals, local cuisine soon came to rely on these once costly flavourings and the tradition of spice cakes was greatly reinforced. Though they no longer commanded the prices they had in the Middle Ages, spices were still not cheap. The generic name for spice cakes is peperkoek, or pepper cake, and this spice was once so highly valued that the Dutch language retains the expression peperduur: as expensive as pepper.
There are countless kinds of spice cakes in Holland, from the large and airy loaves called ontbijtkoek (breakfast cake) to small chewy slabs, with a variety of textures and flavouring combinations in between. Aniseed is the chief spice in Oudewijvenkoek, or Old Wives’ Cake, while Groninger Koek, or Groningen Cake, is studded with pieces of candied citron. Deventer Koek, from the town of Deventer, is flavoured with bitter orange; it was exported to Scandinavia and the Baltic countries as early as the seventeenth century. Sugar nibs are used in some cakes while others have delicious pockets of melted candy sugar. Large spice cakes are a baker’s product, made in batches in huge, specially insulated tins and pried or cut apart afterwards. The doughs are very stiff and must be thoroughly kneaded for a good result. Home bakers content themselves with loaves such as the Gingerbread Loaf in this section.
Some smaller items, such as these Spice Crusts that originated in Amsterdam, are easier to knead and quite simple to make at home. These individual, deliciously chewy spice cakes are so wholesome that they could almost be classed as health food, and they make a very virtuous snack for adults and children alike. They will keep for at least a fortnight in an airtight container.
These are simple to make, but bear in mind that the traditional two-stage preparation and post-baking ripening time will take two days.
250 g/9 oz/1½ cups fine rye flour
1¼ tsp ground cinnamon
¾ tsp ground ginger
¾ tsp ground cardamom
¼ tsp ground cloves
150 g/5½ oz/scant ½ cup honey
5 tbsp water
100 g/3½ oz/½ cup (solidly packed) soft dark brown sugar
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
100 g/3½ oz/scant ⅓ cup honey
Mix the rye flour with the spices in a bowl and set aside.
Put the honey and water in a saucepan over medium heat and stir until it is completely liquid. Cool, then pour it over the flour. Blend with two plastic scrapers, then knead to a dough. It will be hard-going, but persevere. Shape into a ball, then cover with clingfilm (plastic wrap) and set aside at cool room temperature for 24 hours.
Next day, mix the sugar with the bicarbonate of soda and knead thoroughly into the ripened dough. Knead the honey into the dough.
Preheat the oven to 200˚C/400˚F/Gas Mark 6. Line 2 baking sheets with baking parchment.
Turn the dough onto a surface dusted with wheat flour and shape into a ‘sausage’. Cut this into 12 equal pieces.
Take one piece at a time and cut it in half. Roll each of the halves into a neat cigar about 10 cm/4 in long and place the pairs side by side on the lined baking sheet, leaving 1 cm/½ in space between them. When the first sheet is full, use the second sheet. Leave at least 8 cm/3 in between the assembled pairs, as they will spread quite a bit while baking.
Bake one sheet for about 10 minutes. They will be very soft. Pull the paper off the sheet onto a cooling rack and slip the second sheet into the oven.
Allow the crusts to cool on the paper for about 5 minutes before carefully peeling it away.
Store the cooled crusts in an airtight container for 24 hours before eating.
The moist cakelike gingerbread that we enjoy today is a descendant of the old honey and spice cakes that were usually made in flat and solid slabs. Spice cakes are believed to have slowly made their way westwards with the returning Crusaders. They may even have been used as nourishing travelling rations, just as the honey cake known as mikong was carried by Genghis Khan’s invading hordes. Even today, Dutch soldiers are routinely issued with spice cake because it keeps well and forms an excellent source of energy.
The original flat type of gingerbread was often given as a gift in medieval times, particularly at tournaments. The background was symbolically decorated with box leaves to form a fleur-de-lys, with gilded cloves used to mimic nails. The costly ingredients kept these spice cakes as the preserve of the wealthy for several centuries, but as time went by they also began to be used as fairings – gifts given at fair time. Gradually, the flat slabs evolved into a thicker but lighter cake, and early versions were often made with breadcrumbs instead of flour. Molasses from the overseas possessions eventually superseded the honey in some cases, and the introduction of commercial raising agents made it possible to achieve a consistently light product. By the Victorian period, cake gingerbread had replaced its ancestors in the British Isles, but on the Continent, the older kinds are still made alongside airier versions. German lebkuchen and Dutch taai-taai, for example, are chewy, while Dutch speculaas can be made in varying textures, from crisp biscuits to softer slabs.
The following cake gingerbread uses buttermilk in the old Dutch style. In bygone times, when butter was freshly churned on a regular basis on Dutch farms, buttermilk remained as a by-product. It was sometimes given to the animals but more often than not, it was used in breads, pancakes and spice loaves like this one. Buttermilk is now available in cartons in Dutch supermarkets and enjoys a dizzy spell of popularity in the warmer months as a healthy thirst quencher. If you cannot get buttermilk, use soured milk or mix 150 ml/5 fl oz skimmed milk with ¼ teaspoon cream of tartar and use the required amount as a substitute.
Gingerbread benefits from a short maturation period, so keep the whole loaf well wrapped in clingfilm (plastic wrap) for a day before cutting it.
This is quick and easy, but needs to ripen for a day before cutting.
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp ginger
¼ tsp cardamom
¼ tsp cloves
¼ tsp ground nutmeg
¼ tsp mace
175 g/6 oz/generous 1 cup plain (all-purpose) flour
¾ tsp baking powder
¾ tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
¼ tsp salt
50 g/1¾ oz/scant ½ stick butter
125 g/4½ oz/generous ½ cup (solidly packed) soft dark brown sugar
75 g/2¾ oz/scant ¼ cup dark treacle (molasses)
1 egg, beaten
100 ml/3½ fl oz/scant ½ cup buttermilk
450-g/1-lb loaf tin
Sift the flour with the baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt and spice mixture in a large (mixer) bowl and set aside.
Preheat the oven to 160˚C/325˚F/Gas Mark 3. Line the tin with baking parchment.
Put the butter, sugar and dark treacle in a heavy-based saucepan and heat gently, stirring to dissolve the sugar, then combine everything thoroughly. Let it cool slightly, then stir it into the flour mixture along with the egg and buttermilk. Stir vigorously to combine and get rid of any white streaks. This can also be done with a mixer fitted with a whisk.
When the mixture is smooth, transfer it to the tin and level the top. Bake for 40–45 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the gingerbread comes out clean.
Remove from the oven and leave to cool for about 5 minutes in the tin. Transfer to a wire rack, then remove the paper and leave to cool completely.
When the cake has cooled completely, wrap it well in clingfilm (plastic wrap) and keep it for a day before cutting it, to allow the flavours to mature.
* This mixture can be varied as desired or, if one of the minor components is unavailable, simply add a little more of the first three to compensate the shortfall.
The word speculaas is most probably derived from speculum or speculator. Speculum means ‘mirror’ and the spice biscuit is a mirror image of the mould. Speculator means ‘he who sees all’, a reference to the omniscience of St Nicholas. A third, not very credible, explanation is that it was first baked as a gamble or speculation by a baker with some spirit of adventure.
Although prepackaged speculaas biscuits can be bought in Holland all year round, they are really a seasonal item eaten in prodigious quantities in the months leading up to the feast of St Nicholas (6 December). This feast, commemorating his death in AD 324 rather than his birth, has been celebrated in Holland since the twelfth century. Both saint and feast day are called Sinterklaas and it is easy to see how the commercial invention of Santa Claus rests on this base, both linguistically and conceptually. St Nicholas is the patron saint of, among others, sailors and young girls on the lookout for a sweetheart, but nobody loves him more than Dutch children. His ‘official’ arrival at the end of November by steamship from Spain, where he now resides, is televised and broadcast nationwide. Once they have arrived, St Nicholas and his helpers start to visit homes and primary schools all over the country to deposit largesse anonymously in expectantly placed shoes. St Nicholas Eve is also called Pakjesavond in Holland: Parcel Night. On the anxiously awaited evening itself, a jute sack bursting with parcels is often put in the charge of an obliging neighbour who bangs on the doors and rattles at the window panes after he leaves the sack on the doorstep.
For the occasions when St Nicholas himself must put in an appearance, he can be rented, but a tall and slim local man is usually asked to do the honours. He dons the red robe with lacy white surplice and crowns his snowy locks with the mitre that underlines his official role as Bishop of Myra (now Demre) in Turkey, where he was born. Once the flowing white beard has been secured on his face, he is free to grasp his crozier and the Big Book in which the names and conduct of all Dutch children are recorded. He is assisted by a merry band of helpers, each called Zwarte Piet (literally ‘Black Peter’) and clad in brightly coloured doublet and hose with a floppy velvet hat perched on top of a curly black wig. Mischief radiating from their artificially darkened faces, they do handstands and turn cartwheels at any opportunity and delight young and old with their crazy and generally silly behaviour, which often meets with gentle public upbraiding from their master. Eagerly outstretched hands, large and small, struggle to catch the small spice biscuits (pepernoten) and sweets that the Pieten grab by the handful from capacious sacks and fling around with wild abandon.
The role demarcation combined with the skin colour of the Pieten has caused offence, especially in the former Dutch colonies. In Surinam, for example, the custom was abolished on Independence in 1975 and then reinstated in 1992. No offence is meant and all kinds of politically correct explanations are available for those who need them: the colour is caused by climbing up and down soot-ridden chimneys to deliver gifts or the ‘fact’ that the first helper was a devil who was saved from Hellfire by St Nicholas, but not before his skin was badly burnt – and more of the same.
From the end of October, a pleasantly sweet and spicy aroma assails you as you walk past bakeries anywhere in Holland, and supermarkets with their own ovens pop in a few batches of speculaas at the start of the day so that the whole shop is temptingly perfumed by the time the first customers walk in. Speculaas come in various forms. The best known are what tourists often refer to as ‘windmill cookies’. This crisp type is made by pressing the dough into wooden moulds carved in various ways. Souvenir shops sell simplistic replicas, but the original ones were very detailed and often carved by the baker himself in the quieter months or by itinerant carvers who lovingly and skilfully turned lumps of wood into evocative portrayals of social history. All phases of human life were depicted, from St Nicholas to courting couples and babies’ cradles as well as trees of life, animals, trades, tools, instruments, boats and the ever popular windmills. But beauty had its price. In order to bring out the details in the baked product, a very firm and dry dough had to be used, nothing like the buttery articles eaten today. Extra-special ones were gilded or decorated with coloured icing.
Nowadays, speculaas come in all sizes, shapes and textures: crisp, soft, thick, thin, filled and unfilled. For the filled versions, bakers appear to vie with each other as to how much almond paste can be stuffed into how little pastry, sometimes forgetting to strike a happy balance between the two. This recipe is for a filled cakelike speculaas. It remains a sweet and rich treat, so serve it in small squares or wedges. The flavour will be even better if you leave it well wrapped for a day or so.
1½ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp cardamom
¼ tsp ginger
¼ tsp aniseed
¼ tsp cloves
⅛ tsp nutmeg
⅛ tsp mace
250 g/9 oz/1⅔ cup plain (all-purpose) flour
½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
200 g/7 oz/1 cup soft dark brown sugar
175 g/6 oz/1½ sticks butter, chilled and cubed
1 egg, well beaten
300 g/10½ oz coarse almond paste
about ½– ¾ beaten egg – reserve the rest for glazing
Sift the flour with the spice mixture, baking powder, salt and sugar into a roomy bowl. Rub in the butter thoroughly so that the mixture looks like breadcrumbs. A food processor makes short work of this job. If using one, pulse all of the dry ingredients, then add the butter. Continue to pulse until it looks like breadcrumbs and transfer to a bowl.
Add the beaten egg and knead well for a minute or two. Shape into a ball, then wrap in clingfilm and chill for about 1 hour. It can be chilled longer or even overnight, but will then need enough time at room temperature so that it can be rolled out without breaking.
Preheat the oven to 170°C/340°F/above Gas Mark 3. Grease the tin.
Mix the coarse almond paste with enough beaten egg to make a fairly soft, spreadable consistency. Divide the dough into two unequal pieces: one piece about one-third of the total; and the second piece, two-thirds. Shape into balls, then flatten slightly into discs.
Spread a sheet of clingfilm on the work surface and place the larger piece of dough on it. Cover with a second piece of clingfilm, stretched tautly so that there are no folds or creases over the dough. Roll this disc out between the clingfilm to a 28-cm/11-in circle and use it to line the tin, pressing the edges against the side of the tin so that they don’t fall inwards.
Spread the almond paste mixture evenly over the dough and fold in the dough edges so that they rest on the almond paste. Reuse the clingfilm to roll the second piece of dough out in the same way to a 22-cm/8½-in circle. It should be slightly smaller than the diameter of the tin. Trim the edges so that the circle is fairly neat. Moisten the edges of the dough already in the tin with your finger dipped in water and top with the smaller circle. Press the edges gently to seal. Brush with beaten egg and prick with a fork in several places.
Bake for 30–35 minutes. Leave to cool in the tin, then transfer carefully to a serving plate.
* This mixture can be varied as desired or if one of the minor components is unavailable. Simply add a little more of the first three to compensate the shortfall.
Honey cakes are used by many people to break their fast on Rosh Hashanah, Jewish New Year, which falls in the Western calendar in September or October. There are many symbolic touches to Rosh Hashanah food. The normally plaited challah loaf that is customarily broken on Friday evening is made round or coiled for Rosh Hashanah, to represent eternity and symbolize the circle of life. On this holiday, people eat pieces of challah or slices of apple dipped in honey, and few Jewish households will be without a honey cake of some kind. Eating honey represents the wish for a sweet and good New Year.
Honik Lekach exists in many compositions and textures. The one I have given here is feather-light since it puffs up during baking and, more importantly, stays that way when it is removed from the oven.
As the cake contains no dairy products, it is considered pareve, or neutral, and can be eaten with or straight after both meat and dairy meals. To keep it neutral, use a non-dairy fat to grease the tin. Although it is meant to be served cold, it is also very good eaten warm with a scoop of ice cream or lightly whipped cream – and will then be categorized as dairy.
Well wrapped, this cake will keep for a few days at cool room temperature. It can also be frozen.
This is quick to make and can be eaten straight after baking.
175 g/6 oz/generous1 cup plain (all-purpose) flour
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
2–3 tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp salt
4 eggs, separated
125 g/4½ oz/generous ½ cup caster (superfine) sugar
2 tbsp neutral-tasting oil
2 tbsp brandy or rum
zest and juice of ½ lemon or 1 small lime
200 g/7 oz/generous ½ cup honey
24-cm/9-in springform tin
Sift the flour with the baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, cinnamon and salt, and set aside.
In a scrupulously clean bowl, whisk the egg whites until foaming. Add 50 g/1¾ oz/ ¼ cup sugar, whisking all the time, and continue to whisk until stiff peaks form.
In another bowl, beat the egg yolks with the remaining sugar, oil, brandy or rum, lemon or lime juice and zest. When everything is well incorporated, add the honey and beat until homogenous. The idea here is to mix everything well; there will be minimal increase in volume.
Preheat the oven to 160˚C/325˚F/Gas Mark 3. Grease the tin, then line the base with baking parchment and dust with flour.
Add the flour mixture to the honey mixture and whisk briefly until smooth. Using a balloon whisk as you would a spoon, fold in the egg whites, working the mixture just until there are no more white streaks to be seen.
Transfer to the prepared tin and bake for 45–50 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Remove from the oven, then carefully loosen the sides of the cake from the tin and release the clip. Turn onto a wire rack to cool.
