Every weekend I turn into a fairy. Of course, kind. I have to introduce the art of transformation in the kitchen. Yes, yes, don't be surprised. It is necessary to invent and recreate a culinary masterpiece that only good wizards can do. Soon there will be a holiday in our family - the birthday of our youngest daughter. And I have already received an order from the future birthday girl - to prepare a delicious cake, because she invites all her friends to the holiday.
What kind of cake should I bake this time? I often bake sponge cakes according to different recipes, and they sell with a bang - they are devoured with pleasure by my household. But this time I decided to bake a homemade Honey cake. My youngest somehow favors him more.
It turns out very aromatic and tender, and will certainly bring great pleasure, especially to those who love honey. After all, the layers of a honey cake prepared at home turn out to be very fluffy and soft, and after soaking in a delicate cream, it simply melts in your mouth, it is impossible to resist not to eat another piece.
Preparing a homemade honey cake does not require much time; the main thing here is to knead the dough for the cakes well. I hope the children's party will be wonderful, and my daughter and the guests will be happy.
Cake preparation time is a maximum of one and a half hours.
So, let's start witchcraft.
Ingredients
- For the test:
- Honey - 4 tbsp. l.
- Sugar - 1 glass
- Eggs - 4 pcs.
- Baking soda - 1 tsp.
- Butter - 150 gr.
- Flour - 3 cups
- Vegetable oil for
oiling the parchment - For cream:
- Sugar - 1.5 cups
- Sour cream - 500 gr.
- Walnuts for sprinkling - 50 gr.
Instructions
- We start by preparing the dough. Place honey and sugar in a small saucepan and place in a steam bath.
- After the grains of sugar and honey have dissolved, add the butter to the pan.
- And as soon as it melts, add soda.
- And, having thoroughly mixed the whole mixture, pour in the already beaten eggs.
- Cook the mixture in a steam bath for about five minutes - it will gradually lighten and approximately double in size.
- Remove the saucepan from the bath and gradually add flour to the mixture.
- In all the recipes I have come across when preparing honey cake, the dough is usually made thick - that is, it needs to be rolled out into layers. I prefer to make the dough liquid (the consistency is something like thick sour cream) so that it can be poured onto a baking sheet - this way, in my opinion, the cakes turn out much softer and fluffier.
- Pour the finished dough onto oiled parchment placed on a rimmed baking sheet and place in the oven to bake for about 15 minutes at 200°C. This amount of dough was enough for me for two baking sheets measuring 30x30 cm.
- Preparing the cream. In a bowl with a mixer, mix sour cream and sugar.
- Beat thoroughly until the sugar is completely dissolved.
- Forming a cake. Carefully trim the finished cakes on all sides.
- Divide each cake into 2 equal halves. We put the trimmings aside for now.
- I divided the dough by eye before baking, so the second cake turned out to be very thick and fluffy - I had to cut it into 2 halves, and then each of them into 2 more parts. As a result, I only got 6 cakes.
- Now generously coat each cake with cream.
- And lay it out in an even stack.
- Place the cake scraps along with the walnuts in a blender bowl and grind into crumbs.
- Coat the cake on all sides with cream and sprinkle with crumbs.
- Here, in fact, the homemade honey cake is ready. True, it wouldn’t hurt to let it sit in the refrigerator for a couple of hours for soaking and then it can be served at the holiday table along with some tea.
My cake may have turned out a little unsightly, but it tastes simply impeccable. Bon appetit!
Among all the cakes that our grandmothers and mothers baked, “Medovik” remains one of the most beloved. It is appropriate for any holiday, starting from March 8 and ending with a meeting. Those who have never tried to bake this cake are sure that it is very difficult. In fact, prepare “Honey cake”. In this article we will introduce you to different recipes and share options for creams.
Delicacy for the Empress
Did you know that the seemingly simple “Honey Cake” is a whole story that began about two hundred years ago? They say that a certain mysterious culinary specialist first prepared this sweet temptation for the beautiful Elizaveta Alekseevna, who was the wife of the Emperor and Autocrat of All-Russia Alexander the First.
Many years have passed, time has changed, and with it the recipe. The “Medovik” cake is a simple one, made from honey cakes and sour cream based cream, and still remains the most favorite dessert.
Classics of the genre
So, if you decide to bake Honey cake, it’s easier than ever to start with the basic, classic recipe.
To prepare the dough, prepare:
- Eggs - 3 pieces.
- Premium wheat flour - 3 cups.
- Honey - 3 heaped tablespoons.
- Soda - 1 tablespoon.
- Sugar - 1 glass.
For the cream you need:
- Sour cream with a fat content of at least 20% - 800 grams.
- Sugar - 1 glass.
Magic dough
First of all, let's start kneading the dough. Take a stainless steel pan and crack the eggs into it. Add honey, soda, sugar and mix thoroughly. Place on high heat and, without stopping stirring, wait until the mass triples in volume and acquires a golden color. The consistency of the mixture should be foamy.
Remove the pan from the heat and slowly, in small portions, add the sifted flour, constantly stirring. When the dough becomes homogeneous, divide it into eight equal parts.
Baking secrets
Take a springform pan of the required size, grease the bottom and sides with vegetable oil and line the bottom with parchment. We spread the dough and carefully, without using a rolling pin, level it along the bottom with your hands or a spoon.
Place in a preheated oven and bake each cake for 7-12 minutes at 180 degrees. To remove the cakes without damaging them, take the bottom out of the mold, turn it over onto the surface with the parchment facing up and carefully remove it.
The magic of cream
While our cakes are getting a golden blush, let's make the cream. To do this, take sour cream, combine it with sugar and beat well with a mixer or immersion blender. When the cakes have cooled and hardened, our cream needs to be carefully distributed between the cakes, spread the last cake on top and put the cake in the refrigerator for complete soaking. This usually takes 12 hours. The top of the finished treat can be sprinkled with crushed walnuts or confectionery sprinkles. As you can see, preparing the classic “Honey cake” is as easy as shelling pears!
Condensed rivers, honey banks
If you are familiar with the basic recipe, you can try your hand at a more complex version. We propose to prepare a tender, tasty, aromatic, but more complex “Honey cake”. The recipe is simple, but this is only at first glance. In fact, you will have to tinker with it. But as a result, you will get an airy, sweet, and at the same time not at all cloying delicacy.
For the dough we will need the following ingredients:
- Premium wheat flour - 500 grams.
- Margarine - 100 grams.
- Eggs - 2 pieces.
- Honey - 2 full tablespoons.
- Soda - 1 teaspoon.
- Sugar - 150 grams.
- Salt is on the tip of the knife.
For the cream prepare:
- Butter with a fat content of at least 72% - 250 grams.
- Boiled condensed milk - 1 can.
As you can see from the list of products, this is not the simplest “Honey cake”. But the effort is worth it!
Water bath to the rescue
We start cooking, as always, with the dough, which is kneaded in a water bath. To build it, you need to choose two pans. One should be large, and the other a little smaller. The first one is placed in the second one.
Fill a large saucepan halfway with water and put it on the fire. When the water boils, cut the margarine into large cubes, put it in a smaller saucepan and place it in a larger saucepan. Thanks to such an improvised water bath, the margarine will quickly melt.
When this happens, add sugar, honey and salt to it. Continue stirring until the sugar is completely dissolved.
Break the eggs into a separate container and beat them lightly with a fork. Then pour them into the total mass in a thin stream and mix. The water bath will prevent the eggs from curdling.
After a minute, add soda and mix thoroughly again. The mixture will magically begin to turn into a foamy mass and increase in volume. As soon as this happens, turn off the heat and begin to gradually add flour to our mixture. To avoid the formation of lumps, the dough must be constantly kneaded until smooth and soft.
Divide the dough into 8 identical koloboks and roll each one out with a rolling pin. If the dough cools down and loses elasticity, it can be put back into the water bath, where it will heat up and become pliable again.
Bake the cakes on a baking sheet using parchment at a temperature of 180 degrees for 10-15 minutes.
Sweet moments
When the cakes are baked and cooled, let's start preparing the cream. Cut the butter into cubes and soften it. Then open the can of condensed milk and add to the butter. Mix thoroughly. Then turn on the mixer and beat the cream.
Coat the cooled cakes generously with cream; the ugliest cake can be crumbled and decorated with cake on the sides and top. We put the resulting culinary product in the refrigerator overnight, where it will soak and reach the desired state.
Of course, it cannot be said that preparing this “Honey cake” is as easy as shelling pears - the water bath alone is worth it! And, nevertheless, the efforts will not be in vain, because absolutely everyone will fall in love with this cake!
Hastily
If you don’t have much time, and you don’t really want to bother with the cake, you can prepare a quick “Honey Cake”, a simple recipe with a photo of which we suggest you master (what if it comes in handy?).
For the test we need:
- Eggs - 4 pieces.
- Wheat flour - 3 cups.
- Sugar - 1 glass.
- Honey - 1 glass.
- Walnuts - 50 pieces.
- Baking powder - 2 heaped teaspoons.
For the cream we will use:
- Sour cream 35% fat - 400 grams.
- Powdered sugar - half a glass.
- Vanilla - 1 pinch.
Handmade
First of all, we peel the nuts and chop them using a knife or blender. In a separate container, beat the eggs with a mixer with the addition of sugar and honey. Then add flour, nuts, soda and mix everything well. Form a large bun, place it in a bowl and cover with a clean towel or leave to rise in a warm place for 3-4 hours.
After this time, preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Take a baking sheet and cover it with oiled parchment. Then divide our dough into 6-8 equal parts, roll each into a thin layer and bake for 6-8 minutes.
Under powdered sugar
When the skins have cooled and are ready to spread, we begin to prepare the cream. To do this, beat sour cream with powdered sugar and vanilla. Then we coat each cake with cream and put our cake in the refrigerator. When serving, it can be decorated with walnuts, crushed almonds or grated chocolate. Try making this “Honey Cake”: the recipe is simple, quick to make, and the dessert turns out very tasty.
Multi-cooker assistant
If you have a multicooker in your house, baking Honey cake in it is as easy as shelling pears! This miracle assistant will save your time and nerves. Moreover, thanks to her, even those who have never baked anything can master this dessert. So, we invite you to try this easy-to-prepare Honey Cake. A simple recipe in a slow cooker will pleasantly surprise you with its convenience and absolute accessibility.
To make the dough, prepare:
- Wheat flour - 3 cups.
- Eggs - 5 pieces.
- Soda - a little more than half a teaspoon.
- Sugar - 1.5 cups.
- Honey - 5 tablespoons.
For the cream we need half a liter of sour cream and 3 tablespoons of sugar.
Soon soon
First of all, beat the eggs with sugar until a stiff foam forms. Then add honey and lightly beat again.
Carefully pour flour and soda into the resulting mass, mix the dough with a mixer until smooth and pour it into a multicooker bowl pre-greased with vegetable or olive oil. We set the “Baking” mode and wait until the miracle assistant brings our dough to readiness, then we take it out and cut it into cakes with a long and sharp knife (the thinner they turn out, the better).
To prepare the cream, beat sour cream and sugar. Then we form the cake, spreading each layer with cream. Place in the refrigerator to soak. That's all!
Creamy heaven
And finally, we want to tell you one more secret, thanks to which you can diversify the recipe. “Honey cake” is a simple and delicious dessert, but few people will be surprised by it. How can you diversify it? Of course, creams! Try soaking your “Honey cake” with custard, you will definitely like it!
Chocolate fairy tale
To prepare chocolate cream, you need to take:
- Eggs - 3 pieces.
- Sugar - 150 grams.
- Flour - 3 tablespoons.
- Milk - 400 grams.
- Starch - 1 heaped tablespoon.
- Vanilla is on the tip of the knife.
- Butter - 150 grams.
Mix everything except the oil in a saucepan and cook over low heat until thickened. The main thing is to stir constantly so that lumps do not form. Leave to cool. Then beat the butter and add the custard mixture into it in small portions. Beat without stopping until smooth. The finished cream should resemble 25% sour cream in thickness.
Some general tips for making Honey cake according to the classic recipe: firstly, the number of eggs is indicated for category C-0 (these are large eggs), if you have a different category, and the eggs are correspondingly smaller, then take 4 pieces.
Secondly, the taste of the cakes is very dependent on the honey: the darker the honey, the more intense the honey taste of the cake. But be careful - dark honey can give a slight bitterness. You can take liquid or thick honey (I use the latter option).
Let's start preparing our Honey cake (classic recipe).
In a bowl, lightly whisk the eggs.
In a small saucepan with a thick bottom, combine 200 g of sugar, honey and half the butter. Let the honey melt over medium heat, stirring. Pour the eggs into the honey-butter mixture and stir until the sugar and butter dissolve. I cook for 5-7 minutes.
I add soda and leave it on the heat for another minute. Everything should double in size. I take it off the fire.
I pour the mixture from the pan into a large bowl and gradually add the flour. I knead the dough until smooth. Carefully form a ball and let the dough cool for a couple of minutes.
I divide the dough into eight parts and roll each into a ball. I cover with a towel to prevent it from getting airy while the oven is heating up (temperature 200°C).
I roll out a thin layer from each bun, prick it with a fork and put it in the oven (3 minutes per cake).
To prevent the cake from becoming deformed, roll it out directly on the paper and then transfer it to a baking sheet.
From the still warm cake, I cut out a circle or square of the required size.
I put what’s left of the cake layers into a blender and grind it - they will be used to decorate the cake.
Now you can start preparing the cream.
The classic Honey cake contains sour cream, but I suggest making two delicious creams at once: with condensed milk and sour cream.
When choosing sour cream for cream, you need to remember one thing - the higher the fat content of the sour cream, the juicier the cake will be.
For sour cream, beat the sour cream with a mixer, gradually adding the remaining sugar. This will take 10-15 minutes of your time.
For the second cream, you need condensed milk without unnecessary additives. No condensed milk or condensed milk product with vegetable fats will work.
Beat the remaining softened butter with condensed milk into a homogeneous cream.
Despite the fact that for many people the Honey cake is associated mainly with holidays and home celebrations, in my family this cake is baked at least once a month. The thing is that Medovik is the favorite cake of my husband and father, so my mother and I pass this “culinary baton” to each other with stable regularity.
Preparing a honey cake includes not only baking the cake layers, but also preparing the cream. For this cake, I always use the same classic sour cream, which is best able to not only soak up the honey cake layers, but also emphasize the taste of this homemade cake even more. For sour cream, full-fat sour cream with a fat content of 25% is best suited.
Another important feature of the recipe is that the cake is cheap. The ingredients for honey cakes, which make up Medovik, are not very expensive, and most of them are always available in the refrigerator of any housewife.
If you have never made this cake before and you are afraid of culinary failures, the main thing is to follow all the step-by-step cooking steps exactly and you will succeed the first time!
Ingredients:
For honey cakes:- 3 eggs
- 1 tbsp. Sahara
- 50 g butter
- 2 tbsp. honey
- 1 tsp soda
- a pinch of salt
- 3.5 tbsp. flour
- 500 ml sour cream
- 1 tbsp. Sahara
- 1 tsp gelatin
Cooking the dish step by step with photos:
- Beat eggs with sugar into a homogeneous mass using a mixer.
- Then add the required amount of honey to the egg mass. Beat again with a mixer.
- Place the container with the mixture in a water bath and keep it there, stirring constantly for about 15 minutes.
- After a quarter of an hour, remove the container from the bath and let the mixture cool. In several approaches, add flour to the honey mass and knead the dough for the cakes of the future honey cake.
- Roll out the finished dough lengthwise, giving it a “sausage” shape.
- Roll each piece of dough into a thin layer, sprinkling it with a little flour from time to time so that the dough does not stick. Transfer the rolled out layer of honey dough onto a baking sheet greased with vegetable oil.
- Place the dough in the oven, preheated to 180 degrees. The baking time for each cake varies within 7 minutes.
- While the cakes have not cooled, place a plate of the required diameter on them and trim off the excess cake with a knife. It is important to do everything quickly; when the cakes cool down, they become hard.
- We alternately perform the same procedure with all the cakes, of which we end up with eight pieces.
- Now let's move on to preparing the cream. Pour sugar into a deep bowl and add sour cream to it.
- Beat sour cream with sugar with a mixer. Then dissolve the gelatin in a minimal amount of hot water and pour it into the cream in a thin stream and continue whisking.
- Knead the cake scraps into fine crumbs with your hands or grind them in a blender.
- Sprinkle the crumbs obtained from the cake scraps onto the cake on all sides. As a result, we get this delicious homemade honey cake with sour cream.
- After the Honey Cake is soaked, cut it into portions and serve the cake on the table.
You know, usually in recipes for “Medovik” they begin to tell the classic story of its origin. And I want to tell you another story. If you're not interested, you can no doubt skip straight to the recipes with step-by-step photos below. But I found the story funny.
Unfortunately, I don’t remember where I read it. I remember exactly - it was an English-language culinary blog. The woman, the author of the blog, has a Russian husband. As soon as all her friends found out about this and, knowing her passion for cooking, they immediately asked “can I cook something Russian?” And she was not at all a great connoisseur of our cuisine. Of all the familiar options, I decided to settle on this cake, which I once tried in a pastry shop. In order not to bore you with a long story... In general, as a responsible person, she began by searching for a recipe on the Internet, more precisely on the RuNet, passing the pages through a translator program. And I was shocked that there were hundreds of them and they were all different and not alike! How so? As I understood from her words, in the West, as a rule, all recipes for the same dish differ little from each other. She chose one, which, according to the description, was most similar to the taste sensations received from eating a cake in a pastry shop. Started cooking. And then – shock! The cakes are as hard as a sole, the cream (sour cream) all flows down the sides. I was upset and wanted to throw it away, but at the last moment I resisted and put it in the refrigerator “until tomorrow,” just in case. And how surprised she was when in the morning she received exactly what she wanted, a soft, soaked, tender, delicious, melting “Honey Cake”.
Classic honey cake recipe
Traditionally, the dough is brewed in a water bath and this is exactly the classic. Everything else is variations on a theme. But the cream may be different. We will first look at how to prepare the dough and bake the cakes. And then we’ll move on to cream recipes.
Ingredients:
- flour - 3 cups;
- softened butter – 2.5 tbsp;
- sugar – 1/2 cup;
- honey – 3 tbsp;
- soda – 1.5 tsp;
- eggs – 3 pcs.
Preparation:
- We will place the dough in a water bath, so from the very beginning we take a pan suitable for this. Add butter.
- Add sugar.
- Add soda.
- Breaking the eggs.
- We put honey. It can be either liquid or candied. It’s easier to work with liquid, so you can melt the thick one in the microwave or over hot water, or you can put it as is, it doesn’t affect the taste in any way.
- Mix well. In a large saucepan, bring water to a boil, put our ingredients on it. Reduce the heat and continue stirring while heating.
- After some time, usually it takes 15-20 minutes, the mixture will turn white and become more fluffy.
- Remove from the bath and sift the flour into it.
- The dough will be somewhat runny. You can do it as follows: correctly, if you have time, put it in the refrigerator overnight. It will thicken there. If you don't have time or don't want to, add more flour until you feel it can be kneaded with your hands.
- Transfer to a cutting board dusted with flour and knead a little with your hands.
- We divide it into several identical parts according to the number of layers. Usually 8-10.
- Roll out with a rolling pin, cover with a plate and cut with a knife. Don't throw away the scraps! We will still need them.
- Place the pieces on a baking sheet lined with baking paper or a silicone mat.
- Bake in an oven heated to 200°C until done. The finished cakes turn brown and become hard.
- We also bake the scraps. Lay everything out to cool.
The preparations can be made in advance and stored in the cold, in foil. Before moving on to the cream, let's first look at another version of the dough for honey cake.
A simple recipe for Honey cake
Ingredients:
- eggs – 3 pcs;
- sugar – 1 glass;
- honey – 2.5 tbsp;
- flour – 2 cups;
- soda – 1 tsp. without slide;
- vinegar – 30ml.
How to bake:
It's time to move on to creams that you can prepare for the cake at home. The most popular are sour cream and custard. Let's see their recipes and photos.
Sour cream for “Medovik”
In the Soviet Union, many people prepared sour cream. Perhaps because it was one of the most inexpensive and accessible options.
Ingredients:
- sour cream with maximum fat content – 0.5 l;
- granulated sugar – 1 cup.
How to whip cream:
- And we will just beat it. By the way, I remember as a child we had such a hand mixer in the form of a jar with a screw-on lid, into which two whisks and a handle were inserted. You twist it, the whisks rotate and whip the sour cream.
- Of course, in today's world we will use an electric mixer. The sour cream should be cold, and the finer the sugar, the better. Whisk until it dissolves completely.
- Coat the cake and put it in the refrigerator for 12 hours.
Cream with sour cream and semolina
Very gentle, not too runny, but soaks the cake well.
Ingredients:
- sour cream – 3-4 tsp;
- semolina – 1/2 cup;
- milk – 0.5 l;
- sugar – 3 tbsp;
- butter – 70g.
How to cook:
Custard for “Medovik”
Also a very popular and tasty option. To give the cake a caramel color, add chocolate.
Ingredients:
- sugar – 2/3 cup;
- butter at room temperature – 200g;
- eggs – 3 pcs;
- chocolate – 100g;
- starch - 3 tsp.
How to brew:
How to decorate “Honey cake”
Usually the same scraps from the cakes are crumbled after cooling. Sprinkle the top and sides of the cake with crumbs.
You can grate chocolate and decorate with finely chopped nuts: walnuts, hazelnuts.
Sometimes pieces of prunes and nuts are placed on a layer of cream between the cakes. Or fruit, but it seems to me that the fruit in this cake is somehow not very good. But it's up to you.
Choose your favorite Medovika dough recipe and cream for the layer. In any case, both recipes are very successful, each is good in its own way. And bon appetit!
