Honey Cake

See, Rosh Hashanah was made for someone like me. I am at one of those perfect junctions where baking and stress meet squarely in the middle. Some people eat chocolate when they are stressed, some people drink alcohol, some people work out, others go for long walks or just retire to bed. Me, I bake. And these days the stress is so intense that I have puddings and cakes coming out of my ears. Blackberry rice pudding, made from late blackberries gleaned from the bushes round the corner from my house. White cake, a Magnolia Bakery cookery book favourite, made only because it takes hours and hours of whisking to make perfect and requires such concentration that there is no space whatsoever for any thoughts, especially not negative ones. And now honey cake. Rosh Hashanah is a time not just for eating honey cake. If you are me, then Rosh Hashanah is a time for experimenting with different takes on the honey cake.  OK, so. yesterday it was the classic honey cake.  Today, chocolate and honey cake. Tomorrow, the spiced honey loaf. See, this is the great thing about being Jewish. And the Lord said, make honey cake so you can have a sweet New Year. And the Jews answered, yes but what kind? There are so many varieties. And the Lord said, stop doing my head in with these details, I have more important business over on the other side of the Sinai. This one you are just going to sort out amongst yourselves. And lo, yet another of a billion debates about the Torah is launched. Communities everywhere argue about the perfect recipe, the one that makes a honey cake damp enough, sweet but not too sweet, perfect with tea.  This year I have offered, rashly, to contribute honey cake with others from the community, to be eaten and enjoyed by everyone after the Rosh Hashanah service. Oh yes, eaten. Enjoyed. And compared. Try this one, it's much damper than the one over there and the texture is to die for...it will be a Honey Cake Miss World. Well bring it on. Nigella's honey cake, does not use honey, which is odd and must be a candidate for misuse of language under the Trades Description Act. The Jewish cookery books recommend all kinds of bizarre additions including orange peel, lemon rind, bits of biscuits...some of them sound as if you make them using the leftovers from your vegetable peel recycling bin. The chocolate honey cake was my own innovation and I have to say it has not gone down universally well. Purists would hate it, kids love it on the grounds that anything slathered with chocolate is a Good Thing.  One day, someone somewhere will launch the Crufts Dog Show equivalent for Honey Cake. Until they do, I will continue to have fun and exorcise my stress experimenting. Pass last week's leftover orange rind, would you?