honey cake
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Honey cake is another name for gingerbread , which is derived from the fact that gingerbread was traditionally sweetened with honey . The word can also be understood as a designation for those kinds of gingerbread (which have become rare today) that are wholly or predominantly sweetened with honey and do not contain other types of sugar or only contain a small portion; this view is also represented by the German food book . Incidentally, a honey cake horse is nothing more than a piece of gingerbread in the shape of a horse, just like there are gingerbread hearts, men, stars, etc.
The honey affinity of gingerbread is not only due to the fact that granulated sugar was not available in earlier centuries or was only available for a lot of money. For brown gingerbread (e.g. Printen, gingerbread hearts), granulated sugar is not well suited because it would quickly crystallize in the low-water and low-fat baked goods. It is only since the invention of artificial honey (i.e. invert sugar cream), glucose syrup and other types of sugar with a high proportion of invert sugar that honey has been and is partially replaced in these types. But honey is still common here when baking in the household, especially since invert sugar cream is rarely available in retail outlets.
In the food market, high, juicy, Braunschweiger or Dutch-style gingerbread (“breakfast cakes” ) are sold as “honey cakes” , which differ from other products in this category in that they contain honey. They do not necessarily meet the requirements of the German Food Book for "honey gingerbread / honey cake".
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ German food book, guidelines for fine baked goods from 17./18. September 1991, Section III 3, Letter c) bb)