Baking for Passover with 30 dozen eggs

NEWTON -- Over the next few days, Anna Sudman, 84, will be baking more spongecakes than most cooks prepare in a lifetime. Using six tube pans, and making the cakes two at a time, Sudman will have made up to 45 cakes in her small oven by the end of Passover.

The cakes go to Sudman's three children and their families, including five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. "Aside from my family, anyone [of my friends] that asks for a cake gets one," says Sudman. In the days leading up to the first Seder, which is on Monday, many members of this great-grandmother's family will come to her house for a feathery light, pale yellow spongecake on a plastic plate.

Spongecake is the most popular dessert on the Passover table, where the menu cannot include foods made with leavening. The holiday celebrates the Jewish exodus from Egypt, when there wasn't time to wait for the bread to rise.

Sudman's spongecake is made with potato starch, which is permitted in the Passover pantry, along with "cake meal," which is made from special Passover wheat flour. Plenty of egg whites inflate the yolky batter, giving it an airy quality. Sudman began to gather her ingredients a couple of weeks ago. She buys 5 dozen eggs at a time at a wholesale club; by the end of her baking marathon, she'll have used 30 dozen. She'll also use eight to 10 boxes of potato starch, the same amount of cake meal, and about six 5-pound bags of sugar. Sudman still drives. "Sugar's been on sale this past week but they'll only allow each customer to buy two at a time, so I've been running back and forth," she says. "Luckily it's right near my gym."The gym plays an important part in Sudman's life. She leaves her house at 7:30 a.m. four days a week to go to Fitness Etc. in West Roxbury, where she walks four miles on the treadmill, then takes a class in aerobics, kick boxing, or salsa dancing. The same "girls," as she calls them, have been friends for years. Sudman is the oldest of the group; "a young married girl" is about 40. She also teaches papier toile -- a form of creating three-dimensional pictures on canvas. She gave up fish, meat, and poultry years ago, which she thinks contributes to her high energy. "I can't stand sitting around having nothing to do," says Sudman, who lives in the house where she and her late husband, Harry, raised their three children. The kitchen is modest, with one oven that can bake only two cakes at a time. She owns six aluminum angel food pans with little feet, so the cake can be cooled upside-down. One pan is 50 years old.

She begins by separating the eggs. The whites go into the bowl of a KitchenAid electric mixer, the yolks into a large mixing bowl. She uses a hand-held electric Toastmaster beater to beat the yolks, orange juice, and sugar. Then she stirs in cake meal and potato starch, which makes the batter thick. She beats the whites and sugar to stiff peaks before carefully folding the yolks into the whites. The tube pan is not greased, which allows the batter to climb up and cling to the sides as the cake rises.

At the height of her baking, Sudman might have a half-dozen cakes cooling. This baking routine suits her. Last year, she flew to Florida to spend Passover with her daughter, Marcia Chernis, but Sudman won't go away again for the holiday, she says. "Shopping isn't for me."

At home, she occasionally baby-sits for her great-grandchildren, bakes for neighbors, and drives friends where they need to go. She also sews and does alterations for friends. "Today I took my friend to the knitting store because I refuse to drive in her junk box," says Sudman. "Now that I'm home, I'm going to make hermits for a friend because I won't let her buy them in a store."

This year, Sudman will spend Passover at Marcia's Newton home, along with many family members. She'll bring spongecakes, of course.

When Passover is over, Sudman returns to her usual routine, which includes bringing a sour cream apple cake to the girls at the gym every Monday, and a birthday cake for anyone who is celebrating.