Honey cake or honey cake is a delicious aromatic dessert that can be enjoyed by both adults and children. Tempting with its honey aroma with hints of spices, it goes well with tea in the autumn-winter season, and it would also be appropriate to serve it as a sweet dish for a holiday. Of course, honey should be in the composition of the honey cake, the choice of which is better to stop at the most aromatic and natural product, and additional ingredients may differ insignificantly.
The classic honey cake is a cake consisting of honey cakes and cream without any additives. Prunes and walnuts are good ingredients for this cake, as they pair well with honey and spices like cardamom or nutmeg. To prepare a honey cake with prunes and walnuts, namely cakes and impregnation cream, you will need the following ingredients:
- butter 30 g;
- sugar 210 g;
- honey 100 g;
- yolk 8 pcs (from C1 eggs);
- soda 10 g;
- wheat flour, premium grade 520-570 g;
- cardamom, nutmeg 2 g;
- sour cream 20% 600 g;
- cream 30-35% 80 g;
- icing sugar 70 g.
- prunes 200 g;
- walnut 150 g.
The flour must be weighed and sieved. The consistency and quality of the same type of products may vary slightly, for example, 1 honey can be liquid or thick, so it is better to weigh about 600 grams of flour at once and immediately add cardamom and nutmeg to it in the proportion you like. Then you can do the eggs: separate the yolks from the proteins.
When cooking, the dough increases by 4 times, this point is important to take into account when choosing utensils for brewing. For the preparation of the dough, it is better to choose a thick-walled pan with a volume of 3 liters. Put sugar, honey and butter in the selected container and put on medium heat. The sugar should completely melt, and the mass should completely warm up to a boil, for this you need to shake the pan, and not stir the syrup with a spoon. When numerous bubbles appear on the entire surface of the mass and it begins to boil, then it is time to add soda and start working vigorously with a whisk - thoroughly and quickly stir the syrup, which will increase by 4 times.
Then remove the pan from heat and stir for another 2-3 minutes. If the mass does not quadruple with the addition of soda, then you need to leave it on fire until this happens. Then add the prepared yolks 1 piece and mix quickly so that they do not curl up. It is important to leave the thoroughly mixed mass for 5-7 minutes so that it thickens a little and then add sifted flour with cardamom into it in small portions.
The resulting dough should be quite steep, very similar in consistency to shortbread. It must be divided into 8 equal balls and covered tightly with foil and a towel. Air should not penetrate to them, otherwise they will harden and it will be very difficult to roll them out. With this amount of cakes, the diameter of the cake will be about 20 centimeters. Prepare 8 sheets of parchment or foil, lightly dust them with flour and roll dough balls on them to a thickness of about 2-3 mm, and then cut out the cakes using a sliding baking dish, plate or any other convenient device. It is necessary to roll out the cakes carefully, confidently, but not press down strongly with a rolling pin to the table so that the cake does not crumble. Flour, which was used for dusting, is necessary so that it would be convenient to remove the finished cake from it. Pierce the rolled and cut cakes with a fork with an indent of 1, 5 centimeters, also pierce the scraps and leave them on the sheet with the cake, they will still be needed and will also be baked.
Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius and bake each cake for about 6-8 minutes until tender. When the cake is ready, it must be immediately removed from the sheet and removed to cool on a flat surface, and then put all the cakes in a pile. Cooling time for honey cakes is about 5 minutes. Put the baked scraps together and put in the oven for 2 minutes, and when they are ready and already cool, grind in a blender until fine crumbs, which in turn will need to be sieved.
Wash prunes, dry and chop finely. The walnut also needs to be chopped.
For the preparation of cream, sour cream is better to purchase fatty and very thick. You need to place it in a bowl, add powdered sugar and mix, the sour cream will become liquid. Then add the cream and beat at the highest mixer speed until thickened. The finished mass of cream should not be too thick, because the cakes are dry and need to be soaked well. In the finished cream, the tracks from the mixer quickly disappear, it looks like the same fatty sour cream, a little fluid.
The first cake is placed in the cake pan and a part of the cream is applied over its entire surface, which, despite the fact that it does not have an elastic structure, does not spread. Then sprinkle with some prunes and nuts, cover with the next cake and lightly press down. The cream and nuts with prunes must be divided into parts so that there is enough for sprinkling all the cakes, except for the last (top). This is done to the topmost crust, which is smeared with cream and all the voids on the side of the cake are also filled with cream so that the cake takes the correct cylindrical shape. Then it must be put into the refrigerator for 10 minutes and then sprinkled with sifted crumbs. Sprinkling the top of the cake will not be difficult, but you can apply the crumb to the side of the cake using a silicone spatula. The crumb needs to be scored on a spatula and pressed against the cake. The finished cake should be refrigerated overnight and served after 12 hours.
