This recipe is from Jennie Grossinger's Art of Jewish Cooking. My mother has made it every Passover for as long as I can remember.
The trick to Passover cooking is that you can't use anything with yeast or baking soda or baking powder or traditional flour - nothing that would make food rise. Instead, you have to use some permutation of matzo, the flat, cracker-like Passover bread.
This is to commemorate that, according to the Passover story, when the Jewish slaves finally got permission to leave Egypt, they had to leave in a hurry, before Pharaoh changed his mind. (Which, of course, he did, but that's later in the story.) So they had no time to let their bread rise.
In memory of this haste, today Jews spend every Passover on time-consuming work-arounds to get cakes to rise without yeast or baking powder. This particular work-around uses egg whites, stiffly beaten, to make the cake light and fluffy. It works remarkably well. But you have to be quiet when the cake is in the oven - it falls easily. And until recently, it was a pain to get out of the pan.
But then I found this great tip from King Arthur Flour: Just before you pour the batter into the pan, use a pastry brush to paint the pan with melted shortening, then coat it with granulated sugar. Once you're done baking it, wait 5- 10 minutes, cut off any cake lapping over the center tube, then turn the pan upside-down to drop the cake out. If it doesn't drop out, put it back in the cooling-but-still-warm oven for 10 minutes and try again.
When served with fresh-whipped cream and strawberries, this cake can't be beaten. (Well, technically, I suppose it is beaten, what with the six eggs whipped into fluff and all. But you know what I mean.)
Ingredients:
3/4 Cups matzo meal
3/4 Cups potato starch (can't find potato starch? Don't panic. Use more matzo meal.)
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 egg yolks
6 egg whites
1 3/4 Cups sugar
1 Cup orange juice
1 1/2 ground walnuts
1 Tablespoon grated lemon rind (my mom just chops it.)
Mix the matzo meal, potato starch and salt together.
Beat the egg yolks until thick - the beater should leave tracks for a brief time in them.
Gradually add the sugar, beating until the egg yolks are lemon colored.
Add the matzo meal mixture alternately with the orange juice. I find it works well to use the orange juice to wet down the dry powder - this cuts down on the white dust that might otherwise coat your kitchen.
Fold in the walnuts and lemon rind.
Beat the egg whites until stiff. A food processor does this beautifully and quickly. But a hand held mixer is more fun - you can see it make peaks.
Fold the egg whites gently into the batter until they're fully mixed. But be careful so you don't lose the air bubbles - that's what will make your cake light.
Put the batter into a non-stick bundt pan painted with melted shortening and coated with granulated sugar.
Bake at 325 degrees for an hour until browned, the cake shrinks away from the sides of the pan and your fingers don't leave a dent when you gently press down. Cool on a cake rack for 10 minutes, then turn it upside-down on your serving plate to get it out of the pan. Serves 6-8.
