Napoleon Cake Recipe | Russian Torte Napoleon
Russian Napoleon cake (Торт Наполеон) – if you are not familiar with this cake, Napoleon cake is Russian style Mille feuille or cremeschnitte. 12 layers of puff pastry and delicious custard. Not the easiest cake to make, but totally worth the effort.
Napoleon Cake Recipe | Russian Torte Napoleon
Ingredients
For the dough:
- 5½ cups 690g Flour
- 1¾ cup 400g Cold butter, cubed
- 2 Eggs
- 200 ml Ice water
- 1 tablespoon white vinegar
- ½ teaspoon Salt
For the cream:
- 6 Egg yolks
- ⅓ cup 43g cornstarch
- 3 cups 720ml Milk
- 1 cup 230g butter
- ¾ cup + 2 tbsp 175g Sugar
- 2 teaspoons Vanilla extract
Instructions
- DIRECTIONS1. Make the dough: In a small bowl whisk eggs, water, vinegar and salt. Set aside. 2. Place the flour, salt, and butter into a food processor and pulse until crumbs are formed. Transfer to a large bowl, add wet ingredients, mix until dough forms. Transfer to a lightly floured surface, knead with your hands until smooth. Divide into 10-12 equal parts, shape into balls, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour. 3. Meanwhile make the cream: in a large bowl, whisk egg yolks, sugar and cornstarch. Whisk until smooth and set aside. In a medium saucepan heat milk, stirring occasionally, until hot but not boiling. Turn the heat off. Temper the eggs: gradually add the hot milk into the egg yolk mixture, whisking constantly. When combined, pour the mixture back to the saucepan, heat over medium-low heat, stirring frequently, until thickens, about 7-8 minutes. Remove from heat, add butter and vanilla extract, stir until smooth. Cover with plastic wrap and let cool completely. 4. Preheat oven to 375F (190C). 5. On a parchment paper, roll each ball into very thin layer, trim the rolled dough using a 8-Inch (20 cm) cake ring/cake pan. Pierce each layer with a fork. Leave the leftovers on the tray. 6. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until slightly golden. Repeat with the remaining dough. You can bake 2 layers at the time (on one tray only). Let cool to room temperature. Keep the leftover dough for later. 7. Once the cake layers are cooled you can assemble the cake. Spread about 3 tablespoons of cream on one layer, Stack the second layer on top and repeat until you have 12 layers. Spread extra cream on top and sides. 8. Place the leftover dough into a food processor and pulse into fine crumbs. 9. Spread cake crumbs on top and sides of the cake. 10. Refrigerate the cake overnight. Notes: • If your food processor large enough, make the dough in one batch, if not, divide the ingredients into half and prepare the dough crumbs in two batches. • If you don’t have a food processor, you can make the dough by hand. • You can make less than 12 layers.
Huge vanilla slice!
What is vodka vinegar please?
How about shortcuts… for the ones intimidated by the real thing 🙂
May I use ready-to-use dough?
May I use an instant cream? Or a whipped cream?
For 3 years now, I’ve made this twice a year my mom’s birthday as well as my brother’s. It’s perfect.
My personal, but negligible, modifications: I add two layers of jam to the cake. And I don’t add much butter to the custard—maybe a tbs or two. I don’t find that it suffers for that.
Sounds good! Glad you like this recipe 🙂