02/04/2023
As promised let's start with our signature Medovik Honey Cake recipe for this weekend. I will be regularly uploading more recipes including my fav savoury dishes so stay tuned!
Ingredients:
Cake Layers - 4 Eggs, 300g Sugar, 240g Honey, 170g Butter, 2 tsp Baking Powder, 700g Flour
Creamy Custard Filling - 3 Eggs, 180g Sugar, 500ml Milk, 2 tbsp Flour
Decorations - fresh fruit and flowers, crushed
nuts and crushed leftover baked offcuts
To assemble - 18cm spring form cake pan
This recipe is for 10 servings with Prep time 10 mins, Cook time 2 hours 30 minutes, and Set time 8 hours.
Part 1: Making Cake Layers
1. Prepare the Bain Marie by placing a bowl over a pot of boiling water. Make sure that the bowl is not touching the water. Add 4 eggs, 300g sugar, 240g honey (buckwheat honey is best) and 170g of butter (the best quality you can find) in the bowl. Constantly stir the mixture until the sugar and butter are completely melted.
2. Add 2 teaspoons of baking soda. Mix it in and observe the mixture increasing in volume and becoming lighter in colour. A bit of light-coloured foam will form at the top. Take the mixture off the Bain Marie. I usually place a wooden board on the kitchen table and move the bowl with the mixture on the board to cool off 5-10 minutes.
3. Add 700g of Flour (white, unbleached) and mix everything well with a wooden spatula. At this stage the mixture will be quite sticky but it is not supposed to be runny. Once the flour is mixed in, leave the cake dough on the kitchen table to rest 5-10 minutes before dividing it into 10-12 equal dough balls.
4. While your cake dough is resting, prepare a couple of baking paper sheets for dough balls and additional 10-12 baking sheets for our future round cake layers (approximate diameter is 18cm). Once the dough is rested, divide it into 10-12 equal balls. If the dough is sticking to hands add a little bit more flour.
5. Turn the oven on to 180C (fan-forced) and start rolling each ball into very thing layer (approximately 3mm thickness). Pierce each rolled layer with a fork before placing it in the oven to bake.
6. Bake each cake layer for 5-7 minutes. Keep an eye on them as they bake really quick! Once out use a round plate to cut them to shape. Save off cuts for our delicious topping 😋😋😋
7. Stack our beautiful baked cake bases on top of each other layering them with baking paper in between. While they are cooling down it is the perfect time to make our yummy traditional creamy custard filling!
Part 2: The Creamy Custard Filling
8. Using mixer or whisk mix 3 eggs with 180g of white sugar. Separately mix 0.5 litres of milk with 2 tablespoons of flour in a large cooking pot. Combine both mixtures together and constantly stirring slowly bring it to simmer (not boil!). Keep stirring for 15-20 minutes while our cream is thickening. When custard cream is ready, stir in 200g of softened butter and place the mixture in the fridge to cool. Meanwhile we can also grind our leftover baked offcuts for classic "Medovik" topping. After approximately 30 minutes it is time to put our cake together!
Part 3: Cake Assembly
9. Time to assemble our delicious cake! You can either use 18cm cake spring form with clear cake wrappers or put the cake together directly on the kitchen table. Spring form will make your cake sides evenly shaped 😋 Spread generous amount of filling on each base building it up one by one with creamy custard filling in between. Top up last top layer with filling and crushed baked offcuts on top. Decorate with berries and/or fresh flowers. Enjoy with cup of tea or coffee!
10. Back in Russia my mum used to make this cake a day before New Years celebrations and we used to take it outside for a few hours (-30C in winter) to allow layers to absorb creamy filling. Now I just let it sit in the fridge overnight 😋 Once the cake has been in the fridge for at least 8 hours it is ready to be served!
Share with me in the comments any feedback and any help needed just reach out :-) Happy Baking!
