Medovik Recipe

This Medovik ("Russian Honey Cake") cake gets a little sweetness from caramelized honey and some sugar, and some tartness from the yogurt or sour cream. This recipe requires a lot of effort, but it's well worth it.

This cake is wonderful, but the size of this recipe is a bit extreme. Stay tuned for a scaled-down version.

Difficulty: Moderate.

Prep time: 10 minutes general time, 30 minutes chill time, 5 minutes/layer for rolling (45 minutes), 15 minutes to make filling and for assembly, 4 hours+ chllling time.

Cook time: 5 minutes per layer for dough if done one at a time, but you can cook these in parallel with rolling. Total active time is about 70 minutes if your ingredients and tools are all at hand.

Servings: 15 moderate-size slices.

Ingredients

Cake.

• 200 grams Butter, unsalted.
• 201 grams (1 cup) Granulated Sugar.
• 200 grams (9 tbsp) Honey.
• 250 grams (5 whole) Eggs, lightly beaten.
• 667 grams (5 1/3 cups) All-purpose Flour.
• 7.20 grams (1 1/2 tsp) Baking Soda.
• 0.74 grams (1/8 tsp) Salt. A generous "pinch".

Filling.

• 960 ml (4 cups) Heavy Cream (about 35% fat), chilled. This is enough to fill and cover both the top and sides! About 600 ml (about 2.6 cups) is plenty to if you don't want to cover the sides, especially if you're making a square cake where you want to expose the layers anyway.
• 200 grams (70 oz) Yogurt (Plain or Greek), or Sour Cream.
• 115 grams (9 1/2 tbsp) Granulated Sugar. With this amount, the filling is not too sweet. Use more or less as desired, and reduce the amount by 1/3 if you're not planning on covering the sides.
• 5.0 ml (1 tsp) Vanilla Flavoring (Extract or Essence). A strong vanilla flavor is nice here, so double the amount if you must use Vanilla Essence
• 120 ml (1/2 cup) Milk to brush on the cake layers.

Preparation

1. Melt Butter In a large and preferably somewhat tall sauce pan.
2. Add Sugar and Honey. Mix while cooking over medium heat until ingredients are fully combined, about 1 minute.
3. Add Baking Soda, Salt, and optional Cinnamon. Stir vigorously until completely mixed in. Reduce heat if necessary. Mixture will rise up quickly, and lighten in color. Cook this for 1 to 2 minutes until it becomes dark honey-colored.
4. Remove from heat and allow to cool for at 5 to 10 minutes.
5. Temper the Eggs by adding a spoonful of the warm liquid at a time until the Eggs are up to the temperature of the liquid. If the Eggs start to clump and look like scrambled eggs: wait! The liquid is still too hot. When done, whisk the Egg mixture into the sauce pan. The whole mixture will become much darker.
6. Add the Flour in 3 or more steps. The Flour tends to clump up, so I add mine in an absolutely lump-free layer using a small sifter. Mix by hand with a heavy wooden spoon. Or, you can mix with a heavy-duty mixer with a paddle attachment (a small electric mixer isn't powerful enough to do this).
7. Scrape the dough onto a sheet of lightly floured baking paper, and the top lightly with some flour so dough won't stick to your hands. Then shape the dough into the shape of a brick. Cool this in the refrigerator for 30 minutes or more.
8. Divide the cooled dough into eight pieces. Use a scale if you have one. The entire blob weighs about 1500 grams (about 60 oz), so each piece should be about 187.5 grams (7.5 oz).
9. Roll out each of the 8 pieces into a circle about 23cm (roughly 9 inces) in diameter on a lightly floured sheet of baking paper or a slicone baking sheet. Trim a round plate or pan. Instead, can make a square about 20cm (about 8 inches) on each side, and trim using a straight edge. Save the trimmings for crumb topping. To add crumbs to only the top of the cake you'll need about 50 grams (1.8 ounces), and to to add crumbs to the top and sides you'll need about 150 grams (5.3 ounces). If you have too much leftover from trimmings, work it back into some of the layers.
10. Poke many holes in the surface using a fork. This helps to prevent bubbles from formring.
11. Bake each layer in a preheated oven for 5 minutes at 160C (325F). The cake will be soft. Do not overcook.
12. Cool on a wire rack for at least 5 minutes.
13. If you're making crumb topping, roll that out too (the shape is unimportant), and bake this piece for about 10 minutes until crispy but not burned. Once cooked and cooled, crush these with a roller.
14. Make whipped cream. Mix the Heavy Cream, Sugar, and Vanilla Flavoring in a cold glass or metal bowl with an electric mixer starting at low speed and then at medium speed. Stop when the mixture doubles in volume and you can form stiff peaks. Be careful not to overmix as this will turn in to butter! It helps to put the mixing bowl into another bowl of ice water.
15. Mix in the Yogurt or Sour Cream, Vanilla Flavoring, and Sugar. If you're making the smaller batch that doesn't cover the sides, reduce the sugar by 1/3.
16. Assemble the cake by building 8 layers consisting of 1 piece of cake, brushed on milk (which helps to bind the cake and whipped cream), and 1/8 (about 1 cup) of the filling spread out evenly with a spatula.
17. Optionally spread filling on the sides.
18. Optionally sprinkle the top with crumbs. To sprinkle crumbs on the side you can bounce them off a piece of paper or cardboard.
19. Chill at least 4 hours, but overnight is better.
20. You can beautify a square cake by trimming the edges with a moistened cake knife so you have flat surfaces and exposed layers. And, the chef gets to eat the trimmings!

Storage

References