Amarante
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 Fri, Sep 15 2017, 11:39 am
Haven't made this but seems like an interesting variant. You could make both if you're feeding a lot and, of course, honey cake freezes well and needs "aging" anyway.
APRICOT HONEY CAKE
From Ben Moskovitz
MAKES 1 CAKE. (P)
“One thing I cannot get in my head,” said Ben Moskovitz, owner of Star Bakery in Oak Park, Michigan. “Was the food better growing up in Czechoslovakia or were the people hungrier there? My mother made a honey cake for the holiday, and it was so delicious. Honey was too expensive for us, so my mother burned the sugar to make it brown. Here I use pure honey, but I still think my mother’s cake was better and I know I am wrong. The taste of hers is still in my mouth.”
Mr. Moskovitz’s European honey cake follows, with a few of my American additions. Other European Jewish bakers interviewed for this book also bake with white rye flour and cake flour when we would use all-purpose flour. I have included both choices.
½ cup dried apricots, roughly chopped
¼ cup dark rum
2 large eggs
1 cup clover honey
1⁄3 cup vegetable oil
Grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
Grated zest and juice of 1 orange
1⁄3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1⁄3 cup apricot jam
1¾ cups white rye or unbleached all-purpose flour
¼ cup cake or unbleached all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ cup slivered almonds or roughly chopped walnuts or cashews
In a small bowl, soak the apricots in the rum for at least 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease a 10- by 5-inch loaf pan.
In a mixing bowl, beat the eggs with a whisk. Stir in the honey, oil, grated lemon and orange zests and juice, and the sugar, salt, and apricot jam.
Sift the 2 flours and the baking soda into another bowl.
Strain the apricots, reserving the excess rum.
Add the flour alternately with the rum to the honey cake mixture. Fold in the apricots. Scoop the batter into the prepared pan and sprinkle with the nuts.
Bake on the lower oven rack for 50–55 minutes, or until the center of the cake is firm when you press it. Remove from the oven and cool on a rack.
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