When honey cake is on the menu, many dinner guests will pass on dessert. That’s because honey cake at the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashana, is not unlike fruitcake at Christmas: an enduring, if somewhat reviled, holiday staple that never quite seems to live up to the promise of the word “cake.”

Most honey cakes are “dry and taste like tobacco,” the owner of the New York-based kosher catering company Simply Divine, Judy Marlow, said.

Rosh Hashana begins at sundown on September 12, and there’s good news for those who don’t want to abandon the tradition of eating honey cake to sweeten the New Year. A survey of local bakeries, markets, catering companies, and specialty stores found a growing array of honey cake options, many of which include unconventional ingredients.

The supervisor of kosher products at Fairway market, Rabbi Avroham Marmorstein, worked with the market’s Italian baker, Angelo Villareale, to devise three new honey cake recipes, featuring orange liqueur, cranberries, or applesauce, sold for $6.99, $6.99, and $5.99 respectively. These cakes made their debut at Fairway (2127 Broadway, between 74th and 75th streets, 212-595-1888, among other locations), last year in advance of Rosh Hashana, and as a group far outsold the store’s more traditional honey cakes ($5.99), Mr. Marmorstein said.

Honey cakes usually rely on vegetable oil rather than butter because traditionally, observant Jews don’t mix dairy products with meat and tend to eat meat at festive meals. But Simply Divine makes a dairy honey cake, prepared with walnuts, sour cream, and butter, and glazed with honey in two sizes ($5.95 and $9.95). It’s available alongside other Divine to Go desserts at Zabar’s (2245 Broadway at 80th Street, 212-787-2000), or by calling Simply Divine (212-541-7300).

Meanwhile, Amy’s Bread (672 Ninth Ave., between 46th and 47th streets, 212-977-2670, among other locations), incorporates whiskey as well as the juice and zest of lemons into its piquant honey loaves and cakes ($5 a loaf, $9 a cake); and Ruthy’s Bakery (75 Ninth Ave., between 15th and 16th streets, 212-463-8800) in Chelsea Market adds a splash of olive oil to its cakes ($9.95).

On the Upper East Side, shoppers can pick up a brandy-fortified, orange-sweetened honey cake ($14.95) at Eli’s Vinegar Factory (431 E. 91st St., between York and First avenues, 212-987-0885); or try the raisin- and pecan-studded honey loaf ($17) at William Greenberg Jr. Desserts, which will fashion the batter into cupcakes upon request.

But even if you find these newer recipes more appealing than the traditional honey loaves, they still may not satisfy all palates; they didn’t in my house. We tried Fairway’s varieties; a honey apple cake ($15) by a kosher restaurant in Midtown, My Most Favorite Food (120 W. 45th St., between Broadway and Sixth Avenue, 212-997-5130), and a caramel-color honey cake coated with a tart orange glaze ($9.99), prepared by a Brooklyn caterer, World of Chantilly (718-859-1110). Fairway’s applesauce-infused cake won the most praise for its moist texture and its subtle, sweet taste.

But that night an acrid flavor of unknown origin coated my tongue for an hour after the tasting. My husband wondered aloud, “If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we make a good honey cake?”

The next day, I decided to try.

If you make your own honey cake, recipe options abound. On Web sites such as Epicurious.com and in cookbooks such as Faye Levy’s “1,000 Jewish Recipes,” you can find cakes enriched with chocolate chips, laced with ginger candy, or spiked with liqueur.

A cookbook author who runs the “Food As Roots” program at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Katya Goldman, invented a gingerbread-honey cake. She substitutes honey for molasses in a gingerbread recipe from another cookbook. For a Middle Eastern-style dessert, the author of a Syrian Jewish Cookbook, “A Fistful of Lentils” (Harvard Common Press), Jennifer Abadi, recommends a honey cake layered with dates and tahini, a paste of ground sesame seeds.

On an unseasonably crisp afternoon in late August, I attempted a fresh take on the traditional honey cake, modifying a recipe from “New Kosher Cuisine For All Seasons” (Ten Speed Press). The batter smelled so appetizing I couldn’t resist tasting some, admiring the flecks of orange zest and grated apple in it.

When I showed off the finished creation, my family marveled at its distinctive circular shape, but was skeptical that it would taste as good as it looked.

After a few forkfuls, my husband announced, “This is cake I wouldn’t mind eating. You should add a white, orangey glaze like the other one. Chocolate chips, too.”

Then he cut himself a second slice.

Whiskey-Spiked Honey Cake

2 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 scant cup sugar
1/2 scant cup orange juice
4 eggs
1/2 cup canola oil
1 cup honey
2 tablespoons whiskey
1 teaspoon allspice
2 cups raisins (plumped)
2 oranges (zest only)
1 tart apple (grated)
1/2 cup pine nuts (optional)

1. Mix ingredients in a large bowl until well blended.

2. Bake at 350 degrees in a well-greased angel food cake pan for 50 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean.

Adapted from “New Kosher Cuisine For All Seasons” (Ten Speed Press) by Ivy Feuerstadt.