Honey cake, a springy loaf referred to as lekach in Yiddish and historically served at Rosh Hashana, isn’t my favourite vacation dessert. So I used to be thrilled when, within the Nineteen Nineties, Charles Fenyvesi, a colleague of mine at The Washington Post, shared a tantalizing household recipe for a Hungarian honey cake with skinny, biscuit-like gingerbread layers.
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Essentially, it’s an icebox cake with a gingerbread crust. Layered with a buttercream primarily based on Cream of Wheat (sure, Cream of Wheat) and both apricot or bitter cherry jam, it should sit to melt for a day.
But the recipe didn’t fairly work as I’d hoped. (“The torte is extra like a stack of thick graham crackers and the filling a runny soupy mess,” learn one touch upon Epicurious, the place it was printed. I additionally included the recipe in certainly one of my cookbooks.)
Recently, I attempted a higher model of this cake, making it for Steven Fenves, a 91-year-old Holocaust survivor whose household recipes had been preserved and translated.
At age 13, Fenves was taken from his house in Hungarian-occupied Subotica, in what’s now Serbia, and despatched to Auschwitz, the place he was separated from his household. As locals looted the Fenveses’ home, Maris, the household cook dinner, grabbed a red-clothed guide of handwritten recipes.
Fenves’ mom and grandmother died at Auschwitz, and his father, so weakened by the expertise within the camps, died shortly after they have been launched in 1945. The two youngsters returned to Subotica, the place Maris cared for them; she returned the slim handwritten cookbook 16 years later, after they had settled in Chicago with kin.
Adapted from a Hungarian Jewish household’s recipe, this honey cake tastes like an icebox cake with a gingerbread crust (David Malosh/The New York Times)
A yr or so in the past, Alon Shaya, the chef of Saba in New Orleans, shared the contents of the guide with me. Among them was a minimalist recipe for mezeskalacs from Fenves’ grandmother: simply a paragraph for the gingerbready dough with a few measurements in dekagrams and imprecise directions describing skinny layers of cake.
Cakes with skinny layers, referred to as flodni in Hungarian or fluden in Yiddish, have long been emblems of Hungarian and Hungarian Jewish baking. András Koerner, writer of “Jewish Cuisine in Hungary,” means that they have been invented within the second half of the nineteenth century, an evolution of a medieval crammed pastry. The Cream of Wheat filling — a far newer addition — is supposed to imitate a European gruel referred to as griess, made with semolina or any arduous wheat flour.
Last spring, when Shaya was in search of a area to organize a few of Fenves’ dishes for supporters of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, I agreed to carry the occasion at my house. For two days, Shaya’s cooks took over my kitchen, getting ready beef and vegetable goulash with noodles, crisp semolina sticks, sweet-and-sour cabbage, walnut cream cake, recipes reconstructed from a household’s distant previous. As the just about 100 friends, together with Fenves and his household, tasted the dishes at a buffet in my eating room, I waited for the appropriate second to current him with a model of his grandmother’s cake, which I layered with jam and cream fillings.
Bringing out a slice, I watched as Fenves lifted his fork and tasted. He took one other chew. A faint glimmer of reminiscence took maintain in his eyes.
“All of a sudden, I remembered our dinner desk,” he instructed me later. “Of my sister quibbling about one thing, my father who was a newspaper writer coming straight out of his workplace and telling us about world occasions, even at my very younger age.”
As Fenves dipped his fork into the wealthy cake once more and once more, he requested politely if he might take the remainder of the cake house.
Recipe: Hungarian Honey Cake
By Joan Nathan
This Hungarian honey cake is deeply flavored with ginger, cardamom, cloves and cinnamon. The dough is extra like a gingerbread biscuit than a tender sponge cake; it softens because it sits. It’s greatest made a minimum of a day upfront, resting till the icebox-like crust absorbs its candy surrounding layers of filling. The buttery, vanilla-scented filling is so nice to the tongue — however so wealthy you might need to reduce small cake slices. Hungarian honey cake was fashionable earlier than the Holocaust, however sadly this model was largely misplaced with the cooks in focus camps. It’s been tailored within the United States by survivors and different relations utilizing Cream of Wheat filling, which resembles the European gruel made with semolina or arduous wheat flour, and enriched with a lot of butter. This particular cake brings again the reminiscence of their former lives.
Yield: 1 (9-inch) cake
Total time: 1 1/2 hours, plus a minimum of 3 hours’ chilling and 25 hours’ resting
For the Filling and Frosting:
4 cups/960 milliliters milk or soy milk
1 cup/176 grams Original 2 1/2-Minute Cream of Wheat
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups/340 grams unsalted butter, reduce into chunks
1 1/4 cups/252 grams granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon nice salt
1 1/2 cups/454 grams thick, chunky apricot or bitter cherry preserves
For the Torte:
1 cup/201 grams granulated sugar
1/4 cup/60 milliliters milk or soy milk
3 tablespoons darkish wildflower honey
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 massive eggs
4 1/4 cups/544 grams all-purpose flour, plus extra as wanted
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons floor cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons floor ginger
3/4 teaspoon floor cloves
3/4 teaspoon floor cardamom
3/4 teaspoon floor coriander
1/4 teaspoon nice salt
1. Prepare the filling: In a medium pan over medium warmth, convey the milk to a simmer, then whisk within the Cream of Wheat. Cook, stirring continuously, till the combination thickens, about 2 1/2 minutes. Remove from warmth and stir within the vanilla extract. Let cool barely, then stir within the butter, sugar and salt. Let cool, then refrigerate for a minimum of 3 hours and as much as in a single day. Once you’re able to assemble the cake, convey the filling again to room temperature, about 20 minutes. Beat in a stand mixer with a paddle attachment or with a spoon till fluffy.
2. While filling chills, make the torte: Warm the sugar, milk, honey and butter in a small saucepan over low warmth, stirring effectively till sugar is dissolved, butter is melted and elements are totally mixed. Remove from warmth and let cool for a couple of minutes till lukewarm, then pour into a stand mixer. Add the eggs and combine with the paddle attachment on medium simply till included.
3. Sift collectively the 4 1/4 cups flour with the baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, cardamom, coriander and salt, then add to the bowl of the mixer. Mix on medium-low till a clean, not sticky, dough is shaped, including extra flour if wanted, a few teaspoons at a time. Using a dough cutter, divide the dough into 4 equal balls. Set on a plate and cowl with a towel; let relaxation at room temperature for 1 hour to permit the gluten to calm down.
4. Heat the oven to 350 levels Fahrenheit. Lightly mud every ball of dough throughout with flour earlier than inserting it in the course of a sheet of parchment paper. Using a evenly floured rolling pin, roll the dough into roughly a 10-inch circle, about 1/8- to-1/4-inch thick. Cut out a circle utilizing a sharp knife and a 9-inch-round dinner plate or baking pan. Save the scraps of dough, pushing them to the edges of the parchment paper, away from the circle. Transfer the paper with the circle and the scraps to a baking sheet and repeat with the remaining dough balls. You can use 4 separate baking sheets (or use 2 baking sheets at a time and then repeat).
5. Bake 2 sheets at a time till the highest of every spherical is barely puffed and set, about 7 to 10 minutes. (Watch rigorously, as they’ll burn rapidly.) Let cool, then pulverize the scraps in a meals processor or blender. Reserve the crumbs in an hermetic container to embellish the cake.
6. Assemble the cake: Tear a sheet of parchment into a number of extensive strips and use the strips to line the underside of a serving plate in a round sample. (These shall be eliminated earlier than serving and will assist hold the plate clear whilst you adorn the cake.) Place the primary baked cake layer on prime of the parchment and unfold with 1 1/2 cups of filling. Top with a second cake layer and then unfold the apricot or bitter cherry preserves on prime, leaving 1/2-inch border uncovered alongside the perimeter. Top with a third cake layer and unfold with 1 1/2 cups filling. Add the ultimate cake layer, then unfold 1 1/2 cups filling on prime and the remaining 1 1/2 cups filling on the edges. Pat the reserved crumbs excessive and sides, simply sufficient to evenly cowl, reserving the remainder.
7. Let cake stand at room temperature, lined with aluminum foil or plastic wrap, for a minimum of 24 hours — or, ideally, 2 days. (Refrigerating the cake would trigger the frosting to agency up, stopping the cake layers from soaking it up and softening as they’re meant to do.)
8. To get pleasure from, sprinkle extra of the reserved crumbs everywhere in the cake so as to add texture. Carefully slide out and discard the parchment paper strips earlier than chopping into slices to serve.
This article initially appeared in The New York Times.
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