My all time favourite cake is a layered honey cake, I’ve never seen it here in England. When I go back to visit friends in Latvia, I make sure I eat lot’s of it. But as I was going through my massive pile of recipes from magazines (How to Organise recipes – link here) I found a recipe for it – Russian honey cake. The original recipe is from olive magazine, and, spoiler alert!!! – it tastes exactly how I remember. Here is a link for Olives recipe.

Once I had located all the necessary ingredients for my cake, I got to work!

I am very proud that I was able to do the Russian honey cake justice, but it looking, tasting & bringing back memories. It was much easier to make, than I originally thought. I think because it has so many layers, it looks like much more difficult than it actually is.

Before you dive head first into making this amazingly delicious cake, please read all the instructions and my notes. Even though this recipe is from a magazine, I adjusted it ever so slightly and found ways to make it easier for me to do. Especially with transferring the the layers after being rolled out.

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Russian Honey Cake

mycountrylife2016

If you love this Eastern European cake and been struggling to find it anywhere near you, you have to make this as it tastes exactly like I remember.

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Prep Time 2 hrs

Total Time 2 hrs

Course Dessert

Cuisine Eastern European

Servings 16 servings

Equipment

Oven
Hand or stand alone mixer

Ingredients

Icing Ingredients
95 g honey
750 ml double cream
pinch salt
250 g Carnation caramel
65 ml sour cream
Cake Ingredients
150 g honey
125 g unsalted butter
125 g light brown sugar
500 g plain flour plus extra for dusting
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp ground cinnamon
3 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions

Icing part 1 – in a small pan heat until it turns darker, but make sure you don't burn it. Remove it from heat and and add 150ml double cream & salt, stir all to combine. Leave to cool completely.
For the cake – heat oven to 200°C. Put honey, butter and sugar in another pan, cook until everything has melted, remove from heat and leave to a side to cool. While the butter mixture cools, in anothwe bowl mix together all dry ingredients.
Whisk the eggs and vanilla extract in a seperate smaller bowl. While whisking the butter mixture pour the eggs in, but make sure you continue whisking, otherwise the hot butter will star cooking your eggs.
Add dry ingredients and mix it into a dough, for the last bit kneed with your hands. Add extra flour as needed.
This amount of dough will make you 8-10 layers. My layers were 20cm diameter. Cut out 8 circles of your baking paper where you will put your dough circle on for baking.
Separate your dough out into 8 dough balls. Roll them out on your baking paper. I used a plate to make sure all my layers are the same size. I placed the plate over my rolled out dough and cut around with a knife. Then lifted the plate off. Put another baking paper on top, flipped it over and moved to baking try.
I baked these in the oven for 7minutes. My oven is very hot and I always have to cut down the baking time. If you are unsure- bake for 5 minutes and check. You want your layers to have abit of a crusty edge. Once out of the oven, move to cooling rakcs to cool down.
To finish off the icing mixture- mix together honey mixture, sour cream & carnation caramel. In a seperate bowl whisk the remaining double cream until soft peaks. Then gently mix the two mixtures together. It will be a bit runny.
Before you start assembling, stack all your layers, rearrange so they sit nicely, so you don't have a smaller one at the bottom or middle. Make sure you leave one layer to side to do the finishing crumbs on top. Once you are happy with your layering, start assembling. If you feel like the icing is a bit too runny, you can put it in the fridge for a little bit, for it to harden up. When you have assembled it all, cover the sides with the icing as well & put in the fridge to rest & chill overnight.
To finish this lovely Russian Honey Cake off- crumble up your spare layer and sprinkle these over the top of the cake. If you want, you can cover the sides as well.

Video

Notes

My Advice:

1- I found it easier to roll the dough out on a baking paper and then transfer it to the cut out circle baking paper to be baked on.

2- make sure you roll your layers out very thin, I thought mine were, but once they were baked- I could see they were to thick.

3- always add more icing. When you think that’s enough, add more, as I wish I added more, especially because of thicker layers. Luckily I saved the icing in a bowl, so I took a scoop with each piece of cake I ate.

4- don’t be afraid to put the icing in the fridge to firm up, if it feels too runny for assembling. I wish I would have done it.

Keyword Layered Honey Cake, Russian Honey Cake

I will most definitely be making this cake again. And I will be taking my own advice on hot to make it much better. But even with the few little flaws, it tasted amazing. Even my husband liked it! That is saying something, as he is not a big cake person.

What is your favourite cake? Maybe one that brings back some amazing memories?

Russian Honey Cake Photo Library!