Russian Napoleon Cake
The famous Russian Napoleon Cake made with custard cream. This multilayered cake is so light and airy to the taste.
Servings: 12 servings
Calories: 738kcal
Ingredients
For the cake layers:
- 700 grams flour
- 1 large egg
- pinch of salt
- 250 grams butter
For the Custard Cream:
- 1 liter milk (3,6%)
- 6 large eggs
- 450 grams sugar
- 4 tablespoons flour
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract or 1 tablespoons Vanilla sugar
- 250 grams butter (softened to room temperature)
Instructions
To make the dough for the cake layers:
- Sift the flour into a bowl, add the cubed butter.
- Mix with your hands or a fork, to form a sort of sandy texture.
- Break the egg into a glass, whisk a bit, add enough water to make up to 250 ml.
- Add the egg mixture into the sandy butter/flour mixture and form a dough. The dough should not be too hard, but should not stick to your hands either.
- Wrap the dough into a plastic food wrap and place in the fridge for about 30 minutes.
To make the Custard Cream:
- Pour milk into a saucepan and place on a stove to warm up until hot but not yet boiling..In a medium bowl whisk together eggs, sugar and vanilla extract/sugar.
- Add the flour, mix well.
- When the milk is hot, pour a couple of soup ladles into the egg mixture, mix well.Add all of the egg mixture to the saucepan with the hot milk.
- Constantly stirring, cook the custard cream until it thickens. You need to constantly stir in order for it not to form lumps.
- Remove the cooked cream from heat, transfer to a bowl or a container, cover with plastic food wrap. The food wrap needs to touch the cream. This prevents the cream from forming a film cover as it cools. The custard cream will thicken a bit more as it cools down.Allow the cream to cool down completely. You can place it in the fridge or on a balcony.Leave the butter out of the fridge, to warm up to room temperature. We will add it to the cream after it cools down.
Make the cake layers:
- Take the dough out of the fridge, and split into 8-10 equal bits. I had 12, as I was making a small diameter cake.
- Preheat the oven to 180°C (356°F). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. I had two baking trays, so it was a bit faster, you can bake two at a time, just need to switch them halfway. So if you have two baking sheets, use both.
- Roll out each bit as thinly as possible, and to the approximate size that you want the cake to be. After I baked all the layers, I used a 20 cm cake spring form, to cut out even circles, to make the cake. But usually the cake is rectangular. So it is a bit easier to measure. If the baked layers are big enough, you might even have two equal cut outs from one piece.
- Place the rolled out layer on the prepared baking sheet and pierce with a fork in various places. This will help prevent the dough from expanding and forming bubbles. Not that there will be no bubbles at all, but less.
- Bake each layer between 6-10 minutes. Depending on the thickness of the layers and the oven. But you can open the oven after 6-7 minutes and check on the readiness of the cake layer. It is ready when it just starts to show a golden tint, and it is no longer shiny.
- While one layer is baking, you can roll out the next one.
- Once the cake layer is baked, take it out of the oven, place on a wire rack and allow to cool completely. When the next one is baked, place it on top of the first one and so on. Since I was cutting out a shape from the cake layers, I did it while they were still warm, as they become crumbly after and it makes it a bit harder to cut into shapes.Allow the cake layers to cool down completely before adding the cream.Either use one of the cake layers, or if you are cutting them to shape, use the remaining crumbles, to decorate the outside of the cake.
Assemble the cake:
- Once all the cake layers are cool and the custard cream is at room temperature we can mix in the butter and start assembling the cake.
- In a bowl rub or whisk the butter until it is lighter in color and fluffy.Start adding the cooled custard cream, two tablespoons at a time. Mixing well after each addition. Repeat with the remaining cream.There will be a lot of cream, but you will use up all of it.
- Once the cream is done and the cake layers are cooled to room temperature (it is important that they are cooled completely, otherwise they will melt the cream), start assembling.
- Place one cake layer on a serving/cake platter. Place 2-3 tablespoons of custard cream and spread over the whole surface of the cake.Repeat with the remaining cake layers. Remember to keep one cake layer for the decorations, or cut outs. For decorations just crumble the cake layer or cut outs into crumbs.
- Place the last cake layer on top, cover the top and the sides with cream.
- Sprinkle with crumbs and place in the fridge for the night. Tip: to make sure that cake is the softest, I leave it at room temperature overnight and then another 8 - 10 hours in the fridge.
- Take the cake out of the fridge for at least an hour, to warm up before serving.
- Enjoy!
