Honey Cake, and Why It Tastes Better the Next Day

October 12, 2026

Honey cake tastes better the next day because honey keeps working after the oven is off. Fresh from the oven, the top is dry and a little crisp, the crumb is sweet in a flat way, and the cloves and ginger sit on the tongue in separate stripes. Wrap the same loaf and leave it on the counter overnight, and it changes. The top turns soft and faintly sticky, the crumb grows moist and dense, and the slice tastes of honey first and spice second. That change is the reason to bake this cake a day ahead.

This is a spiced loaf in the Ashkenazi style (the style of the Jewish communities whose roots are in the German lands), the cake known in Yiddish as lekakh, made with a dark honey such as buckwheat, brown sugar, coffee and orange. It is an easy batter to stir together by hand. The two things that need understanding are how quickly honey browns in the oven and what it does to a cake once the cake has cooled.

Honey on the New Year table

The custom of eating something sweet at the Jewish New Year is old, and one early instruction for the day reads almost like a menu. In the Book of Nehemiah, on the first day of the seventh month, the day Leviticus sets aside as a sacred occasion marked with loud horn blasts and the date of Rosh Hashanah, the people gather to hear the Teaching (the Torah, the five books of Moses) read aloud and are told to go and "eat choice foods and drink sweet drinks and send portions to whoever has nothing prepared." The Hebrew word translated as choice foods, mashmanim, is defined in the Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew dictionary as "fat piece, tid bit": rich food, in other words.

Foods chosen as good omens came later. The Talmud, the great collection of early rabbinic discussion, records in its tractate (volume) Keritot the sage Abaye saying that since signs matter, a person should get used to eating certain foods at the start of the year. The Shulchan Arukh, the 16th-century code of Jewish law, gives its own list: beans, leeks, beets, dates and pumpkin, each eaten with a short prayer built on a pun on its name. In the law codes, honey appears as a custom of the German Jewish communities. The Tur, Jacob ben Asher's 14th-century law code, describes the custom "as in Ashkenaz," meaning the German lands, of "eating sweet apple with honey at the beginning of the meal." Moses Isserles, whose glosses (short notes added to the main text) bring the customs of Ashkenazi Jews into the Shulchan Arukh, repeats the custom, citing the Tur, and adds the words said with it, citing an earlier authority, Abudarham: "May a sweet year be renewed on us!" He also writes that "we are accustomed to eat fatty meat and all sorts of sweets."

The Encyclopaedia Judaica ties honey cake to another medieval ritual. In the Middle Ages, children began Jewish study with a ceremony in which the letters of the alphabet were written on a slate and covered with honey, and the children licked the honey so that the Scriptures would be "sweet as honey." Honey cake, the encyclopedia notes, was a feature of the same ceremony. Called honig lekakh in Yiddish, it is "a favorite pastry to this day." The same entry records many families dipping their bread in honey instead of salt from Rosh Hashanah to Hoshana Rabba, the seventh day of the autumn festival of Sukkot, as a wish for a sweet new year.

Honey cake has a well-known German relative. The German word Lebkuchen, according to Wolfgang Pfeifer's etymological dictionary, is a regional name for honey cake pastry, going back to Middle High German (the German of the Middle Ages) lebekuoche. The first half of the word has never been explained for certain. It may come from Latin libum, a flat cake, perhaps through the way medieval Latin was pronounced in monastery kitchens, or it may be related to Laib, a loaf of bread, which would make Lebkuchen simply a bread cake.

Why honey browns so fast

Honey is mostly two sugars. The Codex Alimentarius standard for honey, the international food standard, describes it as consisting "essentially of different sugars, predominantly fructose and glucose," and for most honeys sets a minimum of 60 grams of fructose and glucose combined per 100 grams and a maximum of 5 grams of sucrose. Table sugar is sucrose, which the honey handbook of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) groups with the disaccharides, or double sugars, each made of two simple sugars joined together.

That difference shows up as color. Part of the browning of a crust comes from the Maillard reactions, which the Royal Society of Chemistry describes as reactions between sugars and amino acids (the building blocks of protein, here from the eggs and flour) that give toast and roast meat their brown color. The Modernist Cuisine team names dryness and temperature as the two key controls on how fast the reaction runs, and the Royal Society of Chemistry's teaching notes place it above about 140°C (284°F). Modernist Cuisine describes the reaction as running on certain simple sugars, and honey's sugars, fructose and glucose, are simple ones. A 2025 study of Greek honeys by Polatidou and colleagues at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki notes that honey's sugars can take part in Maillard reactions even during processing and storage, before an oven is involved. The FAO handbook lists "a more evenly browned crust at lower temperatures" among honey's advantages in baked goods and puts it down mostly to honey's fructose.

Baking soda pushes in the same direction. Modernist Cuisine notes that baking soda raises a food's pH, making it more alkaline, which also helps browning. Honey itself is acidic, and the FAO handbook credits its organic acids for that. So the soda in this batter, one of the two leaveners that lift the loaf, also nudges the crust darker.

For the cook, all of this means a crust that can look done before the middle is set. This recipe uses a moderate oven, 325°F at sea level, and the foil goes on as soon as the top turns deep brown. A very dark top over an unset center points to oven heat, so an oven thermometer is the first thing to check.

Why it tastes better tomorrow

Honey's sugars attract water. Polatidou and colleagues describe honey's small, water-loving sugar molecules as raising its hygroscopicity, its tendency to pull in and hold moisture, and the FAO handbook ties the same trait to baking: products made with honey keep a soft, springy texture longer and "dry out more slowly." In a loaf like this one, the overnight rest under a tight wrap gives the moisture inside the cake time to even out between the moist center and the drier top, so the crust that was crisp at dinner is soft by breakfast. The crumb settles and turns dense and moist, and the spices, which taste sharp in a warm slice, have had a night to mellow into the honey.

Wrapping is what makes the wait work. A tight layer of plastic wrap or foil keeps the moisture inside the cake instead of letting it escape into a dry kitchen. That matters even more in Colorado. Colorado State University Extension notes that high-elevation areas are prone to low humidity, which makes moisture in food evaporate faster, so an unwrapped honey cake in Denver gives up its moisture to the room when it should be redistributing it inside the loaf. Honey will not make up the loss from the air: the FAO handbook notes that typical honey absorbs water from the air only when the relative humidity (the amount of moisture in the air compared with the most it could hold) is above 60 percent.

Choosing the honey

The honey in a honey cake is not a background sweetener. With coffee, brown sugar and four spices in the batter, a dark honey holds its own, and the FAO handbook notes that the baking industry prefers strong-flavored honeys to get the most flavor from the least honey. Pale, delicate honeys have their own best uses, in tea and with fresh cheese, where their flavor has room. Darker honeys also differ in chemistry, not just shade: Polatidou and colleagues cite research linking darker color with higher concentrations of flavonoids and other polyphenols, two families of plant compounds.

Buckwheat honey suits this cake especially well. Jacobsen Salt Co.'s single-origin raw buckwheat honey is described on its product page as "dark and earthy, with deep molasses overtones," and as never heated, treated, blended or ultra-filtered (shop Jacobsen Salt Co. raw buckwheat honey). Its 8.62-ounce jar holds about 244 grams, just over the 240 grams this loaf needs. Those earthy, molasses notes sit naturally beside coffee and brown sugar, which is why the recipe builds around them. For a softer cake, use half buckwheat and half a milder wildflower or clover honey; the color and flavor land in between. The honey guide explains how color classes and floral sources change what is in the jar (shop the honey collection for the range from pale to dark).

The spices are half the flavor of this cake. Burlap & Barrel's Royal Cinnamon is a Vietnamese heirloom variety its maker suggests for pastries and baked goods (shop Burlap & Barrel Royal Cinnamon), and its Buffalo Ginger is an heirloom ground ginger from northern Vietnam with a fruity, floral aroma (shop Burlap & Barrel Buffalo Ginger). Whole cloves, such as the Pemba Cloves from the Zanzibar Archipelago (shop Burlap & Barrel Pemba Cloves), grind to a powder in a few seconds in a spice grinder; about four of them make the quarter teaspoon here.

The finish is optional. Brushing the warm cake with a little runny honey gives the top a shine and a second, fresher taste of honey that the oven has not touched. Bushwick Kitchen's Bees Knees Salted Honey, a blend of wildflower honeys from the USA and Argentina with a salt brine (shop Bushwick Kitchen salted honey), adds a little salt to that top layer, the way a pinch of flaky salt sharpens a caramel.

Ingredients, for one loaf

Soft butter or oil for the pan
250 g (2 cups) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder (in Denver, 1 teaspoon less 1/8 teaspoon)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda (in Denver, a scant 1/2 teaspoon)
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves, or 4 whole cloves finely ground
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice or ground cardamom
240 g (2/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon) dark honey, such as buckwheat, or half buckwheat and half a milder honey
100 g (1/2 cup packed) dark brown sugar (in Denver, 1 tablespoon less)
120 ml (1/2 cup) neutral oil
2 large eggs, at room temperature
120 ml (1/2 cup) brewed coffee or strong black tea, warm but not hot (in Denver, add 1 tablespoon more)
60 ml (1/4 cup) orange juice
Finely grated zest of 1 orange
Optional finish: 2 tablespoons salted honey or other honey, warmed until runny

To measure honey cleanly, set the bowl on a kitchen scale and pour the honey straight in. If you use cups, a light film of oil in the cup lets the honey slide out.

Method

Ready the oven and pan. Heat the oven to 325°F (165°C) at sea level, or 340°F (170°C) in Denver, with a rack in the middle. Grease a 9 by 5 inch loaf pan and line it with a strip of parchment that runs across the bottom and hangs over both long sides. Honey batter browns and sticks where it touches bare metal, and the parchment handles let you lift the cake out whole.
Mix the dry ingredients. Whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, cloves and allspice in a bowl until the spices disappear evenly into the flour. Clumps of soda left here can leave bitter-tasting specks in the crumb.
Mix the honey base. In a large bowl, whisk the honey, brown sugar, oil, eggs and orange zest together for about a minute, until the mixture is smooth, glossy and the color of dark caramel, with no streaks of honey on the bottom of the bowl. Cold eggs will stiffen the honey; if they came straight from the fridge, set them in a bowl of warm water for 5 minutes first.
Combine. Stir the coffee and orange juice together. Whisk a third of the flour mixture into the honey base, then half the liquid, then another third of the flour, the rest of the liquid, and the last of the flour. Stop as soon as no dry flour shows. The batter will be loose enough to pour, more like a thick pancake batter than a cake batter, and that is right. A few small lumps are fine; beating it smooth makes a tough, tunneled loaf.
Bake, watching the top. Scrape the batter into the pan and set it in the oven. Look at it after 35 minutes. If the top is already deep brown, lay a loose sheet of foil over the pan, shiny side up, and keep baking. In Denver, with the oven 15 degrees hotter, expect to need it.
Test for doneness. The cake is done when the top springs back when pressed lightly, the crack down the center looks dry rather than wet and shiny, and a skewer pushed into the very center comes out clean or with a few moist crumbs: 55 to 65 minutes at sea level, 50 to 60 in Denver. Wet batter on the skewer means more time, in 5-minute stretches, under the foil.
Cool, and finish if you like. Set the pan on a rack for 15 minutes, then lift the cake out by its parchment handles and peel the paper away. For a glossy top, brush the still-warm cake with the warmed honey, a thin coat at a time, letting each soak in. Leave the cake to cool completely, at least 2 hours.
Wrap it and wait. Wrap the cold cake tightly in plastic wrap or foil, pressing the wrap against the surface, and leave it at room temperature overnight, 12 to 24 hours. Then slice it thick, a little thicker than a finger. Kept wrapped, it stays moist for several days, and the slices are good toasted once it starts to firm up.

Baking it in Denver

Here the two sets of rules disagree. Honey argues for a gentle oven, because its sugars brown early. Colorado State University Extension's high-elevation guidance for cakes argues the other way: raise the baking temperature by 15 to 25°F so the batter sets before the bubbles in it grow too large, and check early, since baking time may be shorter. A mile up, leavening gases expand more quickly and water boils at about 203°F (CSU's figure for 5,000 feet, against 212°F at sea level), so a cake rises faster and loses water faster, and without the extra heat it can rise too far before it sets.

This recipe takes the low end of CSU's range. It raises the oven by 15°F, not 25, because a honey cake's crust is already the part most likely to go too far, and it covers the top with foil early instead of lowering the heat. The rest follows CSU's table for elevations from 3,500 to 6,500 feet.

Adjustment	CSU guidance, 3,500 to 6,500 ft	Sea level	Denver
Oven	Raise 15 to 25°F	325°F (165°C)	340°F (170°C), foil on early
Baking powder	1/8 teaspoon less per teaspoon	1 teaspoon	1 teaspoon less 1/8 teaspoon
Baking soda	Reduce, along with baking powder	1/2 teaspoon	A scant 1/2 teaspoon
Sugar	0 to 1 tablespoon less per cup	100 g brown sugar	1 tablespoon less brown sugar; honey unchanged
Liquid	1 to 2 tablespoons more per cup	120 ml coffee	1 tablespoon more coffee
Time	May be shorter; check early	55 to 65 minutes	50 to 60 minutes

The sugar cut comes from the brown sugar rather than the honey, because the honey is the flavor of the cake. CSU explains why sugar matters at all: water evaporates faster at elevation, which concentrates the sugar in a batter and weakens its structure. The overnight wrap matters more in Denver too, for the reason above. The Denver altitude cooking guide covers the physics in more detail.

When it goes wrong

What happened	Likely cause	Fix or prevention
Very dark top, raw center	Oven too hot for a honey batter, or the foil went on too late	Check your oven with a thermometer; tent at 35 minutes and keep baking until the skewer is clean
Center sank after baking	Underbaked, or too much leavening for the altitude	Bake until the center crack looks dry; in Denver, use the reduced baking powder and soda
Cake stuck to the pan	Honey batter browned and stuck against bare metal	Grease and line the pan with parchment every time
Dry, crumbly slices	Overbaked, or left unwrapped to cool overnight	Pull it as soon as the skewer is clean; wrap tightly once cold
Bitter specks	Lumps of baking soda not mixed into the flour	Whisk the dry ingredients thoroughly, or sift the soda in
Tough, tunneled crumb	Batter beaten after the flour went in	Stir only until no dry flour shows
Honey flavor stronger than wanted	All-buckwheat honey, which is the boldest option	Use half buckwheat and half a milder honey

A few things worth knowing at the table

The honey of the Bible may not have come from bees. The Encyclopaedia Judaica notes that the principal honey of ancient Israel seems to have been a thick syrup made from grapes or dates, and that bees' honey, found wild, was rare enough to be counted among the finest of foods.

The apple in honey is written down as a German custom. When the Tur recorded it in the 14th century, it described it as the practice "in Ashkenaz," the German lands.

Honey cake once marked a child's first day of school. In the medieval ceremony, the alphabet was smeared with honey and licked off a slate, and honey cake went with it.

Its German cousin's name is still a puzzle. Wolfgang Pfeifer's etymological dictionary calls the origin of the "Leb" in Lebkuchen uncertain: it may come from a Latin flat cake or be related to the German word for a loaf.

For most of European history, "sweet" largely meant honey, and the history of honey before sugar follows it from rock paintings to the sugar plantations that displaced it.

What sets honey cake apart from an ordinary spice cake is that the sweetener keeps working after the oven is off. Its simple sugars brown early, which is why the oven stays moderate and the foil goes on, and the same sugars help the cake hold its moisture, so a night under a tight wrap leaves crust and crumb soft. A honey cake is meant to be baked one day and eaten the next.

The Ambrosian Pantry is at 263 Josephine Street in Cherry Creek, Denver, and products ship nationwide from theambrosianpantry.com.