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Orange Holocaust Cake
One day at school, I heard from my friend that a Holocaust survivor was going to come to our school and speak about his experience. I was more than excited to go and so was my friend. We asked our science teacher if we could skip science class and go, and she ended up not only saying yes but bringing our entire class.
A man about 50 years old stood in our gym and started speaking about his parents and his aunts and uncles, about how they had gone to the most notorious concentration camps such as Ravensbruck and Auswitchz. He talked about his anger upon realizing that he was an orphan by the time the war was over, and how he had let his anger out by running marathons.
He talked about gas chambers and he talked about this cake. This cake comes from one of the hundreds of recipes written by his aunt, Rebecca Leitelbaum. It was written in 1943 while she was in the concentration camp of Ravensbruck. She wanted to share the recipes with her family afterward, but she ended up sharing it to hundreds of high school students.
Orange cake is eaten on Jewish Passovers. This orange cake tastes a lot like pound cake. It fits a 9” round cake pan and it is packed with orange flavour. Other than that, I chose to sprinkle it with powdered sugar to give it a nice look. I love the fact that this cake has a story. It is a cake that creates that looks back to history while at the same time creating a moment at the present.
Orange Holocaust Cake
Ingredients
3 cups flour
2 tsp. baking powder
2 cups sugar
1 cup butter
1 tsp. vanilla
5 large eggs
1 cup orange juice, freshly squeezed
2 tsp. orange zest
Instructions
1. Whisk together all the dry ingredients.
2. Cream the butter and sugar.
3. Add the egg and whisk until softly creamy. Add the vanilla extract and incorporate.
4. Add the dry mixture in thirds and the liquid in halves, folding with a spatula at each interval. Mix until incorporated.
5. Bake in the oven at 350 degrees F for 60 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean.
Recipe from Rebecca Leitelbaum, Ravensbruck concentration camp, Germany, 1943