Medovik - Russian Honey Cake
Experience the classic flavors of a Medovik honey cake with this delightful recipe. Layer upon layer of tender, honey-infused cake is filled with a luscious creamy and tangy sour cream filling, creating a rich and balanced dessert. This traditional Russian cake improves over time, making it perfect for preparing ahead and allowing the flavors to meld beautifully into a soft, creamy, fragrant cake that surely impresses even the most picky eaters.
Servings :1 18cm cake
Ingredients
Honey dough – thin biscuits
- 200 g granulated white sugar
- 130 g honey (choose a fragrant honey)
- 180 g butter
- 150 g whole eggs
- 6 g baking soda
- 500 g all-purpose flour
- 3 g salt
- 1 g cardamom powder
Whipped sour cream
- 550 g sour cream (minimum of 30% fat content)
- 400 g whipping cream
- 250 g icing sugar
- 10 g vanilla extract
- 10 g orange zest
Instructions
Honey dough - biscuits
- Combine the sugar, honey and butter in a bowl and place over a hot water bath until melted and hot to the touch.
- Gradually add the whole eggs and keep on low heat until the mixture begins to thicken.
- Remove from heat and stir in the baking soda right away. The mixture will foam up and change texture.
- Mix the flour with the salt and cardamom powder then gradually mix it with the warm honey mixture using a spatula.
- The final dough will be quite soft and sticky, but don’t add more flour to it! I know it is tempting, but due to the butter and honey content, it will firm up in the fridge.
- Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 6 hours before using.
- For the next step, make sure your working surface is well floured. I also recommend working on individual pieces of baking paper as the dough is much easier to handle this way.
- Take pieces of dough (80-100g at a time) and roll it into a very thin sheet – 1mm thickness. Cut out discs of 18cm diameter. You can also bake them as they are and cut them afterwards, as they are still hot. However, I find it easier to bake them already cut to size.
- Keep rolling the dough and cutting discs until you run out of dough and you have at least 16 layers of biscuit. I managed to bake 18 discs of dough, using the dough scraps as well by kneading them together once again.
- Bake the discs of dough at 180C for 8-10 minutes or until golden brown and dry.
- Keep in a dry place until needed. You can wrap them in plastic wrap and freeze them for later use if you need to.
Whipped sour cream
- Combine the sour cream and whipping cream in a bowl.
- Whip on medium speed until stiff and creamy. Stay close to the mixer as it can curdle easily.
- Stir in the vanilla and orange zest with a spatula.
To assemble the cake
- Place a 18cm diameter cake ring on a cake board and line it with acetate sheet.
- Begin layering the honey biscuits with the sour cream: 1 biscuit, 80g of whipped sour cream for each layer, biscuit again and so on.
- The final cake will have 15 layers of biscuit while the rest of the biscuits (3 pieces) will be used to decorate the cake later. I usually choose the ones that aren’t that pretty for this particular task.
- Once the cake is built, cover it with plastic wrap and refrigerate it overnight to allow the biscuits to soften due to the moisture in the cream and the flavors combine together well.
To finish the cake
- Mix 120g of sour cream with 30g powdered sugar and use this cream to ice the cake evenly on all sides.
- Decorate the cake with the remaining honey biscuits that have been crushed into a fine powder.
- Enjoy!
Equipment
- Mixer
- Kitchen scale
- Oven
- Baking paper
- 1 18cm cake ring
- Acetate sheet
- Spatulas
- Bowls
- Cooking pot
- Heatproof bowl or double boiler
- Fridge
- Rolling Pin
Notes
The cake needs at least 6 hours of rest time in the fridge to soften and allow the flavors to combine together well.
In terms of flavors, I chose orange and cardamom, but feel free to experiment.
In terms of flavors, I chose orange and cardamom, but feel free to experiment.