On Victoria’s Birthday, her guest� made� me� agreed to do The Russian Napoleon cake. I remember when� I was a child I cooked the cake many times, and it took me long time to prepare it, when in the end all the kitchen was covered by layers of flour. This time I think it took me even longer as I have not cooked it since childhood. But the� final taste of the cake was AWESOME!! 🙂
I am sharing with you the full recipe with some picture that we took during the process.
Good Luck!! 😉
First of all the recipe:
- For Pastry:
- 2� eggs
- 1 cup� sour cream (regular or light)
- 2 sticks� unsalted butter
- 1/4 tsp� salt
- 1/3 tsp� baking soda
- 1 tbsp� white vinegar
- all-purpose flour enough to make soft dough
- For cream:
- 1 liter of� whole milk
- 1/2 cup of� milk (this is not a mistake)
- 2 cups white� sugar
- 4� egg yolks
- 5 very full tbsp� flour
- 3 sticks� unsalted butter
*1 stick Butter = 1/4 pound = 1/2 cup = 8 tablespoons = 4 oz = 115 g
**1 cup = 250 ml
So let’s start.
First of all I created pastry:
Take frozen sticks of butter, grate and chop with a knife, add eggs and sour cream and mix it till they blend well.
Also add salt and baking soda. But before adding soda prepare it by mixing it with vinegar. Or there is another way is use special flour for baking with soda inside.
Start adding flour, make soft smooth dough. Don’t knead it too much, just enough to make it smooth and “un-sticky”.
Split dough into 16 pieces. Cover the dough and put in the fridge to chill.
While waiting� its to chill, I start to prepare the cream.
I separated the egg yolks and stir them very well with sugar and a pinch of salt – until mix turns very light yellow.
After it, I started add flour, it must be mixed well. To the mix I added one cup of cold milk and mixed it well wit avoiding of lumps.
Pour 1 liter of milk into thick bottom pot and bring it to boil. Don’t use aluminum pots – it will burn! and constantly stirring it.
When it started to boiling, reduce the heat to low, and pour the cream mixture into boiling milk very slowly, using a whisk to stir the cream.
Bring the mixture to boil again, constantly stirring it. When it starts boiling, you will see it become thicker. Let it simmer for 2-3 minutes, don’t forget to stir at all times.
When the cream is ready, add vanilla if you like .
You need to cool the pot till room temperature.
While it’s cooling, meanwhile I prepare the second part of the cream:
Take frozen stick of butter, grate and chop with a knife and blend well.
Add cooled cream from pot by parts and every time mix it till it blend well.
When it was ready, i returned to pastry.
Take one by one of dough from the fridge, roll it into a very thin crust on well floured surface – as thin as you can, forming a round crust.
You can use plate or cover of pan, as I did, to cut a perfect circle.
This is the result.
Preheat oven to 250 degrees of Celsius. Roll the crust onto rolling pin, and unroll it onto ungreased baking sheet.
Pierce crust with the fork all over. Bake in the oven for 2 minutes or until lightly golden. Don’t over bake! It is better when it is not dark.
And repeat 15 times. The last crust bake a little longer than others, letting it turn brown. We will use it for crumbs.
NOW ONLY after the cream and the pastries are cooled; Pour part of the cream and spread evenly on the crust.
Periodically have a press on crusts.
Repeat it for every crust. You also should� pour cream on sides of the cake.
The last part: I crushed the brown crust. You can do it by folk or by using the rolling pin.
Pour the crumbs over the top layer of the cake and sides.
Now you need to put the cake to refrigerator for a night.