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Lekach- Honey Cake
Sunday with Marlena Spieler
Honey cake, just the name wants you to want to trying baking it at home. The house smells great, folks at home are happy and when you take the first bite, you are in blissful honey land. With every bite, you get the flavors all coming together~Ginger, honey , orange juice and ground cardamom. Yes, you heard me right, I used cardamom instead of apple spice that the recipe asked for and what I particularly liked was that the cake did not need butter.
Growing up, we did not have an oven like we do here. My mom would place sand in a pressure cooker and bake cookies for us. Then I remember a small movable round oven that would appear every once in a while from the attic. If I am right, I think amma could only bake a dozen cookies at a time. I am sure she will be surprised when she sees the size of the oven we have.
Coming back to the recipe, honey cake is traditionally baked during Rosh Hashanah- when sweet foods are eaten to welcome the New Year. I will eat the cake to welcome a new day everyday to come up with an excuse to eat this wonderful cake. It is not time consuming at all.
All Purpose Flour – 1.5 cups
Sugar – 1/3 cup
Ground ginger – ½ tsp
Ground cinnamon – ½ tsp
Ground cardamom – 1 tsp
Baking soda – 1 tsp
Orange blossom honey – 1 cup
Vegetable oil – 4 T
Orange zest – 1 T
Eggs – 2
Orange juice – ¼ cup
Fresh Ginger – 1 tsp, minced
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- In a large bowl mix all the dry ingredients.
- Make a small well and pour honey, oil, orange zest, eggs, orange juice and ginger.
- Whisk until smooth
- Grease the baking pan and pour the cake mixture and bake for about 20 minutes or until firm to the touch.
- Cool and if you can resist the temptation, store in foil for 2-3 days at room temperature before serving.
- This allows the flavors to all pop when you bite into the cake.
We baked the cake on Thursday and it tastes even better today than when we first tasted it warm.
Eileen has another honey cake on her blog and Mel has very tempting looking fritters.
I just adore your childhood stories. I want to know more about the sand in the pressure cooker!
I love this cake…it looks delish and not too sweet.
The dark color of the cakes are really attractive. I love the idea of no butter in the cake very much.
My aunt used to make cakes in the pressure cooker.
That sounds so good. Much easier than mine was, even thought mine was easy.
Just found out about your site recently
.Awesome recipe. Will try it out. My aunt is an excellent cook and she used to bake me cakes for all my birthdays during my childhood. She used to do it the same way…. sand in the pressure cooker … she loves it when she comes to visit us here in the US 
Thank you Nivedita!
My mom had the same round oven too when i was home. She used to make spong cakes and dry fruit cakes and the one cookie she always made was nankatais which we kids loved. She had them for 20 yrs and it got bad and thenshe went to the shop and bought the same round one than any other fany ones.
Th cake looks so sogood, i can imagine the aroma in your whole home.
The house smelt really good!
I’d really like to know exactly how to bake using sand in a pressure-cooker- that’d be really fascinating if ever you could do a demo- seriously!
The honey cake sounds romantic- love elaichi-scented sweets!
I will surely ask my mom how she baked