Lekach

Lekach is a Jewish honey cake traditionally eaten during the festival of Rosh Hashanah. It is the Jewish New Year and it is begun with eating something sweet. When I started reading about the festival and the origins of the cake I was surprised to know that honey as an ingredient in dessert has been used for centuries. The Egyptians used to eat bread with honey. The Romans and Greeks used to eat fried treats generously drizzled with honey.
The Lekach is of German origin. It evolved from the gingerbread. Eve now there are many variations of it. Some recipes use walnut or almond meal. Cinnamon and ginger are the main spices but many other such as nutmeg, all spice, mace , clove etc are also added.


Ingredients

1 ½ cups flour
½ tbsp. cinnamon pd
1 tsp all spice powder
1 tsp ginger pd
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ cup sugar
3 eggs, separated
½ cup oil
½ cup honey
3 tbsp orange juice
1 tbsp rum

Grease and dust a bundt pan. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius.
Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, all spice powder, ginger powder and cinnamon powder.
Beat the egg yolks and sugar till double in volume. This will take about 3-4 minutes. Add the oil, honey, juice and rum. Mix well. Fold in the flour. Whip the egg whites till peaks form. Gently fold into the batter. Pour into the bundt pan and bake for 50 minutes.