AMALENA

This recipe comes from my maternal grandmother, Vera, and is perfect year round, but especially for Rosh Hashanah if you’re looking for a honey-themed treat. Since it’s baking, I’ve got exact measurements for you!

Ingredients:

• 1 cup warm coffee
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup honey
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1 teaspoon orange zest
• 2 and 3/4 cups of flour (If you want a gluten free version, I’ve made this with cornmeal and it’s turned out good!)
• 2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon allspice
• 1 teaspoon cloves
• 1 teaspoon ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground anise
• 1 shot of Pernod (optional)

Instructions according to Vera:

1. Mix coffee and baking soda, set aside.
2. In a large bowl, beat eggs and honey together.
3. Add sugar and blend.
4. Mix in coffee/baking soda.
5. Add oil, vanilla, orange zest, and Pernod (optional)
6. In another bowl, evenly mix the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, ginger, and anise.
7. Add dry ingredients to the wet ingredients.
8. Bake at 325 degrees in a greased tube pan for about 55 minutes.
9. Test to see that a toothpick pulls out dry before removing from oven to cool.

Instructions according to me (aka, a lazy person with no baking education who doesn’t want to clean extra bowls)

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
2. While it’s preheating, mix together anything wet or powdery except the flour. Aka, coffee, eggs, oil, sugar, spices, zest.
3. Add the flour last.
4. Mix it REALLY well because you want everything evenly distributed and you don’t want flour clumps. That’s why the “right” way to do things calls for separate bowls to mix things evenly, but it’s not impossible to do with one bowl and my cakes have always turned out fine this way.
5. You can pour the mix into either a cake pan, a tube pan, or muffin tray. For smaller things like mini muffins or a thin layer on a cake tray, which I’m fond of doing for this recipe, put them in the oven for about 20 minutes and then check on them. I also like to use butter to grease the bottom of baking trays, but if you’re going for dairy free, use something else of course.

Here’s a picture from my last year’s Rosh Hashanah dessert spread! The muffins and Magen David cake are this recipe. Then I also have a round challah, Amalena’s crowned seven species dessert, and chocolate rugelach (the dough is the same as the challah and it’s basically done the same as my Korean Savory Rugelach, but with chocolate spread and powdered sugar instead of the savory spread and sesame seeds).