Nothing screams fall to me like this Jewish honey cake. I followed this recipe to a "t" and it was pretty near perfection.
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Yield: 2 9″ x 5″ loaves
Equipment
- 12-cup bundt pan or two 9″x5″ loaf pans
- PAM baking spray
- Large mixing bowl
- Whisk
- Medium mixing bowl
Ingredients
- 3½ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 Tbsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- ½ tsp salt
- 4 tsps ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp ground cloves
- 1 cup corn oil
- 1 cup honey
- 1½ cups granulated sugar
- ½ cup brown sugar
- 3 large eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- Juice of 1 orange, diluted to ½ cup with water
- 2 Tbsps instant espresso powder
- 1 cup boiling water
Instructions
- I preheated the oven 350°F.
- In a large bowl, the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and cloves were sifted together.
- I prepared the coffee by mixing the espresso powder with 1 cup of boiling water. I think this is a better option than normal coffee or even fresh brewed espresso because the powdered espresso lacks the acidity of the fresh coffee options.
- In a separate bowl, I mixed together the oil, honey, sugars, eggs, vanilla, coffee, and orange juice.
- The wet mixture was added to the dry, mixing slowly from the center to incorporate the flour without lumps. This resulted in quite a thin batter. Do not let this scare you, it’s completely fine.
- I chose to use 2 loaf pans but a bunt cake pan would work well here as well. I greased my load pans with PAM baking spray and divided the batter between the two pans evenly.
- The cakes were baked for roughly 60 minutes and checked with a knife to make sure the center was done baking. The knife should come out clean and the cake should not be overly wiggly.
Results
This cake was delicious for sure but at first bite it felt like the cloves were overpowering. This intense clove flavor mellowed out by the second bite as my mouth adjusted but I would prefer to cut the cloves with some allspice to reduce that bite in the next test.
