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With the holidays upon us, there is bound to be some kind of honey cake in your future. Sticky-sweet and toothsome? Light and airy with a caramelized finish? Rich and dense? Beyond using quality ingredients, baking techniques and methods may have the biggest impact on taste and texture…and ultimately which recipe your family likes best.
Many honey cake recipes call for separating egg whites, beating them stiff separately, and then folding them into a batter. For the busy home baker (who doesn’t wish to clean another mixing bowl), is this added step important? Why can’t all the ingredients be added together in one bowl?! To put it to the test, I did some baking trials based on the popular Kosher.com recipe for Tante Laya’s Honey Cake.
Trial 1: The Classic Sponge
A heritage family recipe, Tanta Laya’s Honey cake is a perfect example of a large airy honey chiffon-style sponge cake. Eight eggs are a hefty number of eggs to use in one cake, especially when folding stiff egg whites into a thick batter which nearly doubles the volume! It yields a large amount of batter that only a large tube pan or deep 9×13 cake pan could hold (even a standard bundt pan is too small).
In order to achieve the lighter, spongier texture, the yolks are first creamed with half the sugar until pale yellow, thick and billowy. Then the remaining ingredients are added, beating into a thick batter. Eggs whites are separately beaten stiff with the remaining half of sugar (adding a little at a time), creating a stiff meringue that is then folded into the batter. The result is a big, not too sweet cake with a lighter crumb and a smooth, less honey-sticky exterior. (Be sure to use room temperature, grade A eggs to maintain correct liquid proportions or your sponge cake might fall and deflate!)
Baker’s Tip: Invert on a rack to cool after baking to allow air circulation before un-molding (do not grease bundt pan to prevent falling out when inverted!).
Trial 2: The Dump Cake
What would happen if I used the same ingredients and measurements as Tanta Laya’s Honey Cake, but as a one-bowl “dump cake”? Meaning, everything gets dumped in. No separating eggs, no whipping stiff peaks, no folding. There are many delicious honey cakes that fall under this kind of “quick bread” style cake: a tighter, denser crumb and more concentrated honey flavor with a slightly sticky bubbled finish (as is common in sweet loaf cakes). So…what could go wrong?
I first combined the wet ingredients with the sugar, blending well to dissolve, and then whisked in the dry ingredients until smooth. The batter yielded half the volume of the original recipe and was very runny. It seemed to bake okay but the finished product was incredibly dense (think hockey puck!).
Here’s where the science of leavening comes into play. In a cake with no egg whites to leaven and give rise to the cake, chemical leaveners such as baking soda and baking powder are generally employed instead. The original recipe contained almost none since it was relying on egg whites to do the job. Additional moistness for this style cake can also be gained from a larger proportion of sugar and oil than in the original sponge recipe.
The Bottom Line:
Which kind of honey cake is best, you ask? Whichever texture makes you happy and reminds you of your grandmother’s honey cake. Light and spongy or sweet and cakey?
My advice: if you are looking for a one-bowl cake, choose a recipe that is designed for that style of baking rather than trying to adapt a sponge cake whose proportions won’t work for that purpose. This recipe is a great example: Bubbie’s Honey Cake
Armed with the right baking 411, you can choose which recipe is best before baking blunders choose for you!
Naomi Ross is a cooking instructor and food writer based in Woodmere, NY. She teaches classes throughout the country and writes articles connecting good cooking and Jewish inspiration. Her first cookbook, The Giving Table, was released in 2023. Follow her at @naomirosscooks on Instagram or visit her website: www.naomirosscooks.com.
Photography by Naftoli Goldgrab Photography
