One of the highlights of the Rosh Hashanah season has just hit Bakeshop shelves. Bumble Honey Cake is back! And, I’m happy to say, it tastes terrific! Complex, sweet, with a bit of bitter in the background, substantive but not too heavy, delicious any way you eat it. You don’t need to be either a practicing Jew or a practicing poet to want to put some on your plate! It is, quite simply, to my taste, one of the most terrific sweets we make!
In our never-ending work to make more flavorful and more traditional food, this fall we began using freshly milled rye flour from our friends at Janie’s Mill in Ashkum, Illinois. What was already really good, almost overnight became so terrific that I had a hard time not eating it all day! The Honey Cake has a big round wonderful flavor, an exceptionally moist texture, and a really lovely long finish! “Wow!” might be the best way for me to sum up my reaction! I don’t typically eat a lot of sweets, but this one has become one of my favorites. It’s so much more flavorful than the honey cake I grew up with! Kudos to the Bakehouse crew for making it happen.
Honey cake at the Bakehouse is made from a long list of luscious ingredients including a healthy helping of buckwheat honey from a beekeeper in northern Michigan. The honey’s got a big bold, dark, mysteriously fruity flavor. Add in the freshly milled rye flour, sugar, freshly cracked eggs, golden raisins, fresh orange and lemon zest, ground cinnamon, cloves, ginger, nutmeg and some freshly brewed black tea and you’ll send the New Year off to a good start.
Amy Emberling, co-managing partner at the Bakehouse says: “I think it’s an overlooked winner—complex layering of flavors, an interesting and subtle version of gingerbread. I love the ingredient list.” Great after dinner, or to start the day have a slice for breakfast. Its big, well-rounded, softly spicy flavor would be fantastic with a cup of that great Tree Town Blend coffee we’re brewing this month. The honey cake is terrific with Creamery gelato as well. You can toast it and serve it with a little Creamery Cream Cheese in the morning. Or with some room temperature Vermont Creamery Cultured Butter. It’s a wonderful way to ring in the New Year!
In the context of last week’s work on poetry, 15 years ago Anna Belle Kaufman published a beautiful poem about dealing with her mother’s death. A honey cake, left behind in her mother’s freezer, is the main focus of the poem, which brings together the joy, the loss, the good times, the grief, and the hard times that we all deal with every day. It’s a lovely ode to life and honey cake, and a poetic dive into the loss that death brings to everyone. The last two stanzas are:
I close my eyes, savor a wafer of sacred cake on my tongue and try to taste my mother, to discern the message she baked in these loaves when she was too ill to eat them:
I love you. It will end. Leave something of sweetness and substance in the mouth of the world.
