Byzantine Honey Cakes

Γεια! So, today was the first meeting of our Medieval Society at school. Our “theme”, I guess is what you would call it, well, it’s more of a focus, but whatever, is the Byzantine Empire! I’m super excited about it. I <3 the Byzantine Empire. Turkey is such a pretty, pretty place and the Turks are really nice. The Turkish language is pretty too. Of course, Byzantium was more of a Greek empire than anything so, learning Greek might come in handy. Greece is pretty too. The Greeks are nice too. Anyways, to celebrate I figured that I would post an old recipe that dates back to the Byzantine Empire! Huzzah! Honey Cakes! Enjoy.

Ingredients

·         1 cup of flour, preferably whole grain. They didn’t bleach their flour in Byzantium, so why should you?

·         1 ½ teaspoons of baking powder

·         ¼ teaspoon of sea salt

·         ½ teaspoon of ground cinnamon

·         ¾ cup of butter. Don’t use the fake stuff. It makes for nasty aftertastes.

·         ½ teaspoon of orange zest

·         ½ teaspoon of lemon zest

·         ¾ cup of sugar

·         3 eggs

·         ¼ cup of milk

·         1 cup of chopped walnuts

·         1 cup of sugar

·         1 cup of honey

·         ¾ cup of water

·         ½ teaspoon of orange juice

·         ½ teaspoon of lemon juice

Directions

·         Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F

·         Grease and flour an 9 inch square pan. You can use Baker’s Joy if you don’t want to go through the trouble of greasing and flouring. I guess if you wanted a round cake you could do that too.

·         Combine flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and orange and lemon zest then set aside

·         In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and ¾ cup of sugar until it is light and fluffy

·         Add in the eggs one at a time while beating

·         Beat in the flour mixture alternating with milk until incorporated

·         Stir in walnuts

·         Pour batter into pan

·         Bake for 40 minutes or until a toothpick stuck in the center comes out clean

·         Cool for about 10-20 minutes

·         While cooling, combine honey, 1 cup of sugar and water in a saucepan

·         Bring to a simmer and cook for about 5 minutes

·         Add in the orange and lemon juice and cook for another 2 minutes

·         Cut into squares or diamonds. I prefer squares, but if you are going for traditional, diamonds are how they are usually served

·         Pour the honey syrup on the top of the squares/diamonds

It isn’t too complicated, but some people don’t like them. I will tell you this now. They are really sweet, as are 90% of Turkish/Greek sweets. It’s sort of a European thing actually. All sweets in Europe are ridiculously sweet. Well, sweet by American standards. What do we know, we inherited our taste in food from the British. I do like British food, don’t get me wrong, it’s just slightly less “exotic” than the rest of European cooking…if you want to call Europe “exotic”.

Also, I have had numerous emails lately about why I insist on using unbleached/whole grain flour and real butter. I shall explain now, and hope this solves the numerous emails asking the same thing. If you have ever ground your own flour, which I have since I grew up in a farming area/Mennonite/we’re just ridiculously old fashioned household, you will notice that, wonder of wonders, flour is not white! Shocking, I know. Just like vanilla isn’t actually clear, it’s brown. Flour is anywhere from a light tan to a dark brown depending on the wheat or grain you use to make it. Bleaching the flour is just what it says it is, you are bleaching the flour. Do you really want that in your system? Not particularly. Most of the chemicals used to bleach flour are not permitted to be put into food products in Europe. And people wonder why the Europeans live longer; they don’t have all the extra shit in their food. Seriously, be smart about what you eat, look at the labels. Anyways, since most of my recipes are European recipes, to get the best possible taste, use unbleached/whole grain flours. They taste better and are better for you. As for the butter questions. The reason that I say to use real butter is because it tastes better and it actually comes from a cow. In fact, a good percentage of really butters will only have one to three ingredients. One other thing that I have gotten a few questions about is about using sea salt. You can use regular salt, but I prefer sea salt and use it in all of my recipes, if I even use it at all. All of these recipes can be made without salt if you can’t have a lot of salt in your diet.

Happy cooking and enjoy some Byzantine food. In fact, since the Greeks and the Turks will tell that any given food that both cultures have in common they will say that they came up with it first, I think I shall just call all Greek/Turkish food Byzantine food from now on. Let’s see how many people I can confuse.