Honey cake is a cake loved by many since childhood. This relatively low-calorie dessert with a delicate pleasant taste. However, not everyone knows how to make honey cake with their own hands. There are several recipes for the cake; its taste can be varied as desired. Making honey cake is a rather labor-intensive process. You need to bake the cakes, prepare the cream, assemble the cake. It takes a lot of time to soak the cake in cream. But it’s worth it, because the result is an excellent dessert for the holiday table with the taste of caramel and honey.

To make the cake tender and melt in your mouth, you need to take into account the nuances of its preparation. Preparing honey cake is not difficult, you just need to select the right ingredients, follow the proportions and know some cooking rules:

1. To bake a cake you need to use liquid honey. If the honey has already become candied, it must be melted in a water bath. With a liquid product it will be easier to knead the dough.
2. Light honey is suitable for honey cake. Dark honey has too strong a flavor. You should also not use buckwheat honey, otherwise the cake will turn out too tart.
3. The honey cake will turn out soft and tender if the dough is steamed. To do this, you need to boil water in a saucepan. And place the second pan inside the dish so that its bottom does not touch the water.
4. You must strictly follow the amount of sugar indicated in the recipe, since honey also gives a sweet taste to the cake. If you put a lot of sugar in the dough, the honey cake will turn out cloying.
5. Only warm dough is rolled into cakes.
6. To get a delicate honey cake, it is better to use sour cream. Sour cream gives a pleasant taste to the cake and makes the cakes airy.
7. For the cream you should use full-fat sour cream. Instead of granulated sugar, it is better to use powder. Before making the cream, the sour cream needs to be cooled, so it will mix more easily with the powdered sugar.
8. You can add condensed milk or cocoa to the sour cream for cream. You can also replace sour cream with these products.
9. The taste of the cake can be varied by adding prunes or walnuts to the cream.
10. Before assembling the cake, you need to put a layer of cream on a dish and place the first layer on it. Assembling a cake should always start with the cream, not the layers.

Honey cake recipes

Preparing honey cake consists of several stages:

It’s better to cook honey cake 1 day before use, since soaking the cake takes about 12 hours. It is not recommended to soak honey cake for 2-3 days.

Classic recipe: honey cake “Tenderness”

For making cakes you will need 600 g flour, 300 g sugar, 50 g butter, 150 g honey, 1 teaspoon soda, 3 eggs. The cake according to the classic recipe uses 2 types of cream: sour cream and condensed milk. To prepare sour cream cream, you will need 500 g of sour cream (fat content of at least 20%), 300 g of sugar. For condensed milk cream - 1 can of condensed milk (360 g), 200 g of butter.

Honey cake with nuts and prunes without rolling out the cakes

To prepare this version of honey cake it takes a little time. To bake cakes you will need 100 g of sugar and butter, 150 g of honey, 3 eggs, 350 g of flour, 1 teaspoon of soda. To make the cream you need 0.5 kg of sour cream (25% fat content), 300 ml of cream (35% fat content), 5 tablespoons of powdered sugar, 300 g of pitted prunes and 200 g of walnuts.

Honey cake “Ryzhik” with custard without water bath

Honey cake can be prepared without steaming the dough. For a cake according to this recipe you will need 1 cup of sugar, 2 - 3 eggs, 2 tablespoons of honey, 2 teaspoons of soda, 3 cups of flour, 100 g of margarine. For the cream you need to take 0.5 liters of milk, 125 g of sugar, a bag of vanillin, 4 tablespoons of flour and 2 eggs.

Among all the cakes that our grandmothers and mothers baked, “Medovik” remains one of the most beloved. It is appropriate for any holiday, starting from March 8 and ending with the New Year. Those who have never tried to bake this cake are sure that it is very difficult. In fact, making “Honey cake” is as easy as shelling pears! In this article we will introduce you to different recipes and share cream options.

Delicacy for the Empress

Did you know that the seemingly simple “Honey Cake” is a whole story that began about two hundred years ago? They say that a certain mysterious culinary specialist first prepared this sweet temptation for the beautiful Elizaveta Alekseevna, who was the wife of the Emperor and Autocrat of All-Russia Alexander the First.

Many years have passed, time has changed, and with it the recipe. The “Medovik” cake is a simple one, made from honey cakes and sour cream based cream, and still remains the most favorite dessert.

Classics of the genre

So, if you decide to bake Honey cake, it’s easier than ever to start with the basic, classic recipe.

Ingredients

• Eggs – 3 pieces.
• Premium wheat flour - 3 cups.
• Honey - 3 heaped tablespoons.
• Soda – 1 tablespoon.
• Sugar - 1 glass.
• Sour cream with a fat content of at least 20% - 800 grams.
• Sugar – 1 glass.

Preparation

First of all, let's start kneading the dough. Take a stainless steel pan and crack the eggs into it. Add honey, soda, sugar and mix thoroughly. Place on high heat and, without stopping stirring, wait until the mass triples in volume and acquires a golden color. The consistency of the mixture should be foamy.

Remove the pan from the heat and slowly, in small portions, add the sifted flour, constantly stirring. When the dough becomes homogeneous, divide it into eight equal parts.

Take a springform pan of the required size, grease the bottom and sides with vegetable oil and line the bottom with parchment. We spread the dough and carefully, without using a rolling pin, level it along the bottom with your hands or a spoon.

Place in a preheated oven and bake each cake for 7-12 minutes at 180 degrees. To remove the cakes without damaging them, take the bottom out of the mold, turn it over onto the surface with the parchment facing up and carefully remove it.

While our cakes are getting a golden blush, let's make the cream. To do this, take sour cream, combine it with sugar and beat well with a mixer or immersion blender. When the cakes have cooled and hardened, our cream needs to be carefully distributed between the cakes, spread the last cake on top and put the cake in the refrigerator for complete soaking. This usually takes 12 hours. The top of the finished treat can be sprinkled with crushed walnuts or confectionery sprinkles. As you can see, preparing the classic “Honey cake” is as easy as shelling pears!

Honey cake with condensed milk and butter cream

If you are familiar with the basic honey cake recipe, you can try your hand at a more complex version. We propose to prepare a tender, tasty, aromatic, but more complex “Honey cake”. The recipe is simple, but this is only at first glance. In fact, you will have to tinker with it. But as a result, you will get an airy, sweet, and at the same time not at all cloying delicacy.

Ingredients:

• Premium wheat flour – 500 grams.
• Margarine – 100 grams.
• Eggs – 2 pieces.
• Honey – 2 full tablespoons.
• Soda – 1 teaspoon.
• Sugar – 150 grams.
• Salt is on the tip of the knife.
• Butter with a fat content of at least 72% - 250 grams.
• Boiled condensed milk – 1 can.

As you can see from the list of products, this is not the simplest “Honey cake”. But the effort is worth it!

Preparation:

We start cooking, as always, with the dough, which is kneaded in a water bath. To build it, you need to choose two pans. One should be large, and the other a little smaller. The first one is placed in the second one.

Fill a large saucepan halfway with water and put it on the fire. When the water boils, cut the margarine into large cubes, put it in a smaller saucepan and place it in a larger saucepan. Thanks to such an improvised water bath, the margarine will quickly melt.

When this happens, add sugar, honey and salt to it. Continue stirring until the sugar is completely dissolved.

Break the eggs into a separate container and beat them lightly with a fork. Then pour them into the total mass in a thin stream and mix. The water bath will prevent the eggs from curdling.

After a minute, add soda and mix thoroughly again. The mixture will magically begin to turn into a foamy mass and increase in volume. As soon as this happens, turn off the heat and begin to gradually add flour to our mixture. To avoid the formation of lumps, the dough must be constantly kneaded until smooth and soft.

Divide the dough into 8 identical koloboks and roll each one out with a rolling pin. If the dough cools down and loses its elasticity, it can be put back into the water bath, where it will heat up and become pliable again.

Bake the cakes on a baking sheet using parchment at 180 degrees for 10-15 minutes.

When the cakes are baked and cooled, let's start preparing the cream. Cut the butter into cubes and soften it. Then open the can of condensed milk and add to the butter. Mix thoroughly. Then turn on the mixer and beat the cream.

Coat the cooled cakes generously with cream; the ugliest cake can be crumbled and decorated with cake on the sides and top. We put the resulting culinary product in the refrigerator overnight, where it will soak and reach the desired state.

Of course, it cannot be said that preparing this “Honey cake” is as easy as shelling pears – the water bath alone is worth it! And, nevertheless, the efforts will not be in vain, because absolutely everyone will fall in love with this cake!

Honey cake in a slow cooker

If you have a multicooker in your house, baking Honey cake in it is as easy as shelling pears! This miracle assistant will save your time and nerves. Moreover, thanks to her, even those who have never baked anything can master this dessert. So, we invite you to try this easy-to-prepare Honey Cake. A simple recipe in a slow cooker will pleasantly surprise you with its convenience and absolute accessibility.

Ingredients:

• Wheat flour - 3 cups.
• Eggs – 5 pieces.
• Soda - a little more than half a teaspoon.
• Sugar – 1.5 cups.
• Honey – 5 tablespoons.
• Sour cream – 500 gr
• Sugar - 3 tbsp.

Preparation:

First of all, beat the eggs with sugar until a stiff foam forms. Then add honey and lightly beat again.

Carefully pour flour and soda into the resulting mass, mix the dough with a mixer until smooth and pour it into a multicooker bowl pre-greased with vegetable or olive oil. We set the “Baking” mode and wait until the miracle assistant brings our dough to readiness, then we take it out and cut it into cakes with a long and sharp knife (the thinner they turn out, the better).

To prepare the cream, beat sour cream and sugar. Then we form the cake, spreading each layer with cream. Place in the refrigerator to soak. That's all!

Creamy heaven

And finally, we want to tell you one more secret, thanks to which you can diversify the recipe. “Honey cake” is a simple and delicious dessert, but it will surprise few people. How can you diversify it? Of course, creams! Try soaking your “Medovik” with chocolate custard, you will definitely like it!

Chocolate fairy tale

To prepare chocolate cream, you need to take:

• Eggs – 3 pieces.
• Sugar – 150 grams.
• Flour – 3 tablespoons.
• Milk – 400 grams.
• Starch – 1 heaped tablespoon.
• Vanilla - on the tip of the knife.
• Butter – 150 grams.

Mix everything except the oil in a saucepan and cook over low heat until thickened. The main thing is to stir constantly so that lumps do not form. Leave to cool. Then beat the butter and add the custard mixture into it in small portions. Beat without stopping until smooth. The finished cream should resemble 25% sour cream in thickness.

You know, usually in recipes for “Medovik” they begin to tell the classic story of its origin. And I want to tell you another story. If you're not interested, you can no doubt skip straight to the recipes with step-by-step photos below. But I found the story funny.

Unfortunately, I don’t remember where I read it. I remember exactly - it was an English-language culinary blog. The woman, the author of the blog, has a Russian husband. As soon as all her friends found out about this and, knowing her passion for cooking, they immediately asked “can I cook something Russian.” And she was not at all a great connoisseur of our cuisine. Of all the familiar options, I decided to settle on this cake, which I once tried in a pastry shop. In order not to bore you with a long story... In general, as a responsible person, she began by searching for a recipe on the Internet, more precisely on the RuNet, passing the pages through a translator program. And I was shocked that there were hundreds of them and they were all different and not alike! How so? As I understood from her words, in the West, as a rule, all recipes for the same dish differ little from each other. She chose one, which, according to the description, was most similar to the taste sensations received from eating a cake in a pastry shop. Started cooking. And then – shock! The cakes are as hard as a sole, the cream (sour cream) all flows down the sides. I was upset and wanted to throw it away, but at the last moment I resisted and put it in the refrigerator “until tomorrow,” just in case. And how surprised she was when in the morning she received exactly what she wanted, a soft, soaked, tender, delicious, melting “Honey Cake”.

Classic honey cake recipe

Traditionally, the dough is brewed in a water bath and this is exactly the classic. Everything else is variations on a theme. But the cream may be different. We will first look at how to prepare the dough and bake the cakes. And then we’ll move on to cream recipes.

Ingredients:

• flour - 3 cups;
• softened butter – 2.5 tbsp;
• sugar – 1/2 cup;
• honey – 3 tbsp;
• soda – 1.5 tsp;
• eggs – 3 pcs.

Preparation:

1. We will place the dough in a water bath, so from the very beginning we take a pan suitable for this. Add butter.
2. Add sugar.
   
3. Add soda.
   
4. Breaking the eggs.
   
5. We put honey. It can be either liquid or candied. It’s easier to work with liquid, so you can melt the thick one in the microwave or over hot water, or you can put it as is, it doesn’t affect the taste in any way.
   
6. Mix well. In a large saucepan, bring water to a boil, put our ingredients on it. Reduce the heat and continue stirring while heating.
   
7. After some time, usually it takes 15-20 minutes, the mixture will turn white and become more fluffy.
   
8. Remove from the bath and sift the flour into it.
   
9. The dough will be somewhat runny. You can do it as follows: correctly, if you have time, put it in the refrigerator overnight. It will thicken there. If you don't have time or don't want to, add more flour until you feel it can be kneaded with your hands.
   
10. Transfer to a cutting board dusted with flour and knead a little with your hands.
    
11. We divide it into several identical parts according to the number of layers. Usually 8-10.
    
12. Roll out with a rolling pin, cover with a plate and cut with a knife. Don't throw away the scraps! We will still need them.
    
13. Place the pieces on a baking sheet lined with baking paper or a silicone mat.
    
14. Bake in an oven heated to 200°C until done. The finished cakes turn brown and become hard.
    
15. We also bake the scraps. Lay everything out to cool.

The preparations can be made in advance and stored in the cold, in foil. Before moving on to the cream, let's first look at another version of the dough for honey cake.

A simple recipe for Honey cake

Ingredients:

• eggs – 3 pcs;
• sugar – 1 glass;
• honey – 2.5 tbsp;
• flour – 2 cups;
• soda – 1 tsp. without slide;
• vinegar – 30ml.

How to bake:

It's time to move on to creams that you can prepare for the cake at home. The most popular are sour cream and custard. Let's see their recipes and photos.

Sour cream for “Medovik”

In the Soviet Union, many people prepared sour cream. Perhaps because it was one of the most inexpensive and accessible options.

Ingredients:

• sour cream with maximum fat content – ​​0.5 l;
• granulated sugar – 1 cup.

How to whip cream:

1. And we will just beat it. By the way, I remember as a child we had such a hand mixer in the form of a jar with a screw-on lid, into which two whisks and a handle were inserted. You twist it, the whisks rotate and whip the sour cream.
2. Of course, in today's world we will use an electric mixer. The sour cream should be cold, and the finer the sugar, the better. Whisk until it dissolves completely.
3. Coat the cake and put it in the refrigerator for 12 hours.

Cream with sour cream and semolina

Very gentle, not too runny, but soaks the cake well.

Ingredients:

• sour cream – 3-4 tsp;
• semolina – 1/2 cup;
• milk – 0.5 l;
• sugar – 3 tbsp;
• butter – 70g.

How to cook:

Custard for “Medovik”

Also a very popular and tasty option. To give the cake a caramel color, add chocolate.

Ingredients:

• sugar – 2/3 cup;
• butter at room temperature – 200g;
• eggs – 3 pcs;
• chocolate – 100g;
• starch - 3 tsp.

How to brew:

How to decorate “Honey cake”

Usually the same scraps from the cakes are crumbled after cooling. Sprinkle the top and sides of the cake with crumbs.

You can grate chocolate and decorate with finely chopped nuts: walnuts, hazelnuts.

Sometimes pieces of prunes and nuts are placed on a layer of cream between the cakes. Or fruit, but it seems to me that the fruit in this cake is somehow not very good. But it's up to you.

Choose your favorite Medovika dough recipe and cream for the layer. In any case, both recipes are very successful, each is good in its own way. And bon appetit!

One of the most delicious and favorite cakes that many people with a sweet tooth probably adore is Honey cake. Of course: this aromatic and satisfying dessert miraculously combines thin honey cakes, tender and juicy, with smooth and velvety sour cream and butter cream. A little imagination and even the simplest honey cake will turn into an unexpected and original surprise for the whole family!

In general, in the order table this recipe was declared as a Honey cake according to GOST. However, I do not know of a single recipe for this honey cake that could be classified as such. That is why I called it classic - similar ingredients and their proportions, in my opinion, are most often used in cooking by most housewives.

Products for honey cakes for Medovik are not expensive and are almost always available in any refrigerator. For the cream, I advise you to use only high-quality butter (with a fat content of at least 72%), and choose richer sour cream - from 20%. You should not reduce the amount of sugar, nor should you replace fragrant honey with molasses or invert syrup.

Now a few words about the decor of this homemade cake. If for some reason (lack of time, desire or necessary ingredients) you do not want to repeat the decoration that you see in the photo, you can easily stop at step 32. Just cover the cake with honey crumbs and you're done. Well, for those who love the original design of cakes and other desserts, please be patient, bubble wrap, white chocolate, natural honey and a few other little things. But we'll talk about this below...

Ingredients:

Dough for honey cakes:

(400 grams) (220 grams) (100 grams) (2 pieces ) (2 tablespoons ) (1 teaspoon) (1 pinch)

Sour cream and butter cream:

Chocolate and honey decoration:

Cooking step by step:

To prepare a fragrant honey cake, we will need the following ingredients: premium wheat flour, granulated sugar and vanilla sugar, natural bee honey, sour cream, butter, chicken eggs, baking soda and salt. For decoration, if desired, buy high-quality white chocolate; I will tell you what the bees need below.

First of all, let’s prepare the dough for thin honey cakes using the custard method. To do this, break a couple of chicken eggs into a thick-walled saucepan or stewpan, add 220 grams of granulated sugar and a pinch of salt.

Beat everything with a mixer or whisk until a thick light foam forms. You don’t need to beat for a very long time - with a mixer at high speed for 2-3 minutes, and with a hand whisk for 5 minutes.

In the same bowl add 2 tablespoons of natural honey and 100 grams of butter. It is advisable that the butter be soft, that is, at room temperature - this way it will disperse faster and more evenly in the egg mass.

Place the saucepan over medium heat and, stirring constantly (stir especially carefully along the bottom so that nothing burns), bring the custard base almost to a boil. During the heat treatment process, the initially thick mass will turn into a rather liquid one - this can be seen in the photo. It is important not to boil the mixture, but simply bring it to almost a boil!

Mix everything vigorously and immediately remove the dishes from the heat. The custard base will immediately begin to foam, bubble and greatly increase in volume. This procedure will only take a few seconds.

Stir, stir, stir and at the same time gradually add sifted wheat flour. This way we brew the flour, that is, we will have choux pastry.

The amount of flour needed for brewing may vary depending on its moisture content. You need to add flour to the pan until it is possible to mix the dough. Perhaps at this stage you will need 250 grams, or maybe more or vice versa less.

We begin to knead the honey dough with our hands, only carefully so as not to get burned. Gradually it will cool and stirring will become more convenient.

As a result, according to this recipe, my dough takes exactly 400 grams of premium wheat flour (I always buy Lidskaya). The finished choux pastry turns out very, very soft, sticky while warm (then it won’t stick to your hands, don’t worry) and aromatic. Just don’t stuff this dough with excess flour, as in this case the finished cakes will turn out dry and dense.

Divide the dough into 10 parts, preferably of the same weight. I specifically weighed each piece - it turned out to be 85 grams. Roll each piece into a ball and place on a flat plate or dish lightly sprinkled with wheat flour (I did not indicate the additional amount for shaping in the ingredients).

We cover the dough with cling film or foil so that the surface does not dry out and become crusty, and put the balls (they have already become flat cakes - the dough is so tender) in the refrigerator for 1 hour. During this time, the choux pastry will rest, cool completely and thicken - it will be very convenient and easy to work with.

Once the dough has been in the refrigerator, it’s time to work with it further. Don't forget to turn on the oven in advance and preheat it to 170 degrees. It is best to roll out pieces of choux honey dough immediately on parchment paper, and then immediately bake the preparations for the future Honey cake on it. Here we will need a little more wheat flour, the amount of which I did not indicate in the ingredients - about 3 tablespoons will be enough to form the entire dough. Sprinkle a piece of baking paper with a little flour, put a piece of dough and dust it a little too.

Using a rolling pin, roll out the cake into a thin cake, preferably round. The thickness of the workpiece should be no more than a couple of millimeters.

Next you need to give the dough layer a perfectly round shape - this can be done using a plate, pan lid or springform pan. I get blanks with a diameter of 20 centimeters - we just cut them in a circle with a sharp knife.

Slightly move the dough scraps away from the round piece so that they do not stick together during the baking process. Generously prick the flatbread itself with a fork - this way it will not swell during baking.

Bake the first honey cake along with the scraps in a preheated oven on a medium level for about 4-6 minutes, no longer. The cakes cook very quickly, they brown beautifully and increase in volume by about 2 times.

Remove the finished honey cake from the parchment paper and immediately transfer it to a flat surface while it is still hot. The cakes will be very soft immediately after baking, and as they cool they will no longer bend, so work quickly.

In this way we bake all the cake layers for the Honey cake - in total we get 10 pieces with a diameter of 20 centimeters. I’ll tell you a little about how to do this quickly and not waste time. Roll out 1 cake layer, put it in the oven, and meanwhile roll out the second one on the second piece of parchment. Take out the finished cake and immediately bake a second one, rolling out the third. In other words, it turns out to be a kind of conveyor belt - everything will take about an hour.

When they have completely cooled and hardened, grind them into crumbs in any convenient way. If you like to decorate the Honey cake with fine, fine crumbs, you can grind everything in a food processor or mince it. I prefer decor when I come across such small pieces, so I just break everything with my hands, after which I rub some of it with my fingers. The result is a non-uniform coating - it’s more interesting.

The base for the honey cake is ready and cooled, so it’s time to move on to preparing the cream. And the cream will be very interesting - butter and sour cream. It will have the smoothness and velvety of butter whipped with powdered sugar and a light, subtle sourness of sour cream, which miraculously sets off the sweetness of the cake itself. Before you start whipping the butter, you must soften it. To do this, cut cold butter (250 grams) into small pieces and leave at room temperature for 2-3 hours.

Beat everything with a mixer at high speed for at least 5 minutes, until the butter becomes fluffy and turns white. You will have to beat the cold butter for about 20 minutes, so be sure to give it time to warm up.

All that remains is to add 300 grams of fatty sour cream to the whipped butter, which should also be at room temperature. Just add it in portions and mix with a spatula or hand whisk. The result is a very delicate, smooth, homogeneous and tasty cream.

The next stage of preparing the classic Honey cake is assembly. Immediately take a flat plate or dish according to the diameter of the cakes, but with a margin. Apply about a teaspoon of cream to the center so that the future cake holds securely on the plate and does not slide off. We cut out 4 strips from parchment and place them on a dish, as shown in the photo. What is it for? So that later you don’t have to rub off the cream from the edges of the dishes and scrape out the honey crumbs.

Place the first honey cake in the center and apply some of the sour cream and butter cream. You must calculate the amount of cream so that there is enough for all 10 cake layers and also cover the sides of the cake.

Then we put the cake back on, apply the cream... and thus assemble the entire Honey cake.

We also coat the sides of the future cake with cream and, if possible, level it with a culinary spatula or spatula. Actually, at this stage you can cover the entire cake with honey crumbs and the Honey cake will be ready, but I suggest going further. Place the cake in the refrigerator or freezer for 10-15 minutes (this is the minimum) so that the cream sets.

Let's also make an original decoration in the form of a honeycomb. To do this, we need bubble wrap, which comes in boxes when you buy bottled equipment. Cut a circle with a diameter of about 30 centimeters (a little more is possible), wash it thoroughly and dry it thoroughly - there should be no water! Place on a flat surface with the convex side up.

It is very important not to overheat the chocolate, otherwise you will have to buy a new batch. The melted white chocolate should be smooth and uniform.