hello this is chef john from food wishes comm with russian honey k that's right
there are basically three different ways you can make this amazing cake the hard
way the harder way and the way we're gonna do it the hardest way but it's all
gonna be worth it because once you're finished you're gonna be enjoying one of
the most beautiful and delicious cakes of all time
so with that let's go ahead get started and the first thing we're gonna need to
do here comrades is burn some honey so let's go ahead and transfer some honey
into a saucepan that we will place over medium heat in case you're keeping score
at home I'm using a wildflower honey but I have to think pretty much any honey's
gonna work in this and I know I just said we're gonna burn the honey but
that's not really true alright all we're really gonna do is cook this until it's
like one shade darker and sort of takes on the aroma of caramel or as I
pronounced it all my life caramel and yes it is insane I'm using a
pan this small because it is probably gonna foam up and you do not want this
boiling over on your stove so you go ahead and use something a little deeper
but anyway I went ahead and cooked mine for about 10 minutes or so until like I
said it kind of darkened up a bit and I started smelling that distinct aroma of
caramelized sugar and then once we've pushed that as far as we want to go what
we'll do is turn off the heat and whisk in a little splash of cold fresh water
which will immediately stop this from cooking any further plus make the
texture a little bit thinner once it cools and then once that set we'll push
it to the back of the stove and we'll place a large metal bowl over our lowest
heat setting into which we will toss a whole bunch of butter and for the record
this bowl is supposed to be placed over simmering water and not directly on the
flame but just like when I make hollandaise I like to live dangerously
and as long as we have a really really low heat setting this will be fine and
then to the butter we will also add a touch of white sugar as well as some of
our recently burned honey plus some regular honey and then what we'll do to
this is absolutely nothing we will simply let it sit there until our butter
melts and while we're waiting what we should do is take some baking soda not
powder baking soda and add some salt to it as well as some cinnamon because
we're going to be tossing that in in a few minutes and then what we'll do once
our butter melts or almost melts let's go ahead and give
this a whisk and leave it over the heat until it's very warm to the touch
all right not super hot and not just barely warm and then what we'll do one
set is very warm to the touch just go ahead and add six cold eggs and we'll go
ahead and whisk those in and relax this is not so hot that it's gonna scramble
those eggs which reminds me if your eggs scramble it was too hot and what we'll
do once our eggs have been mixed in is simply keep this over that very low heat
setting until the entire mixture comes back to that very warm temperature and
sure a temperature would help here but you're not getting one you have to learn
to use the force and your fingertips and then what we'll do as soon as that
mixture does feel very warm again let's go ahead and stir in our baking soda
cinnamon mixture and you'll see just after a few minutes of stirring the
mixture is gonna change color and get much lighter and we'll sort of look
thick and foamy and that's because of all those little tiny bubbles that the
baking soda is producing and then once that's been stirred in and our mixture
is hopefully looking a little something like this we will remove that from the
heat into some better light and we'll go ahead and finish this up by sifting in
some all-purpose flour which we generally don't want to do all at once
so what we'll do is sift this in two or three additions and as soon as one
additions been stirred in we will add the next and once all that flours been
added and stirred in we should be looking at a somewhat thick but still
fairly runny and easily spreadable batter so that is looking just about
perfect right there and then what we'll do to form our layers of honey cake is
transfer just shy of about half a cup onto the Silpat lined baking sheet and
then using ideally an offset spatula we want to spread this out into about an
eight or nine inch circle and since I have like zero cake making utensils and
tools I just spread mine out using a rubber spatula but if you google offset
spatula you'll see what you're supposed to use and yes as you can tell from the
dirty Silpat I actually did a few before I filmed this one but don't worry this
one came out just as bad and then what we'll do once that set is give it a
quick shake and then the old tap a tappa to knock out any big air bubbles in
which point we're gonna cook this at 375 for about six to seven minutes or until
it looks like this and that's it we only have to do that several more times
which is why it's an advantage to have more than one pan and one Silpat and no
my oven didn't magically clean that Silpat while was baking this was a shot
from the other pan I was using and the shot just happened to be a lot better
but anyway what we want to do as soon as that comes out of the oven is very
carefully slide it off the pan and onto the table which is gonna allow it to
cool a lot faster and then after about six or seven minutes it should be cool
enough and firm enough to remove from the mat and by the way even though the
surface looks pretty smooth you'll see as I flip this upside down onto this
piece of parchment underneath you will have some spots where bubbles have
formed but do not worry about those as you'll see that's not going to cause any
problem and you should be pretty shocked if each layer does not have a few of
those but anyway I went ahead and did seven more of those stacking them up
with parchment paper between the layers as I went but I stopped stacking it
three because as you can see in this shot those first few I piled up sort of
stuck to the paper because this is a relatively sticky cake because of the
honey so I stopped stacking those and just ended up spreading them out on the
table like this and then once all your layers are totally cooled we can take a
plate in my case a paper plate and trim around them making sure they're all the
same size and not to brag but all mine were really close but even so I did grab
my pizza wheel and I went around so they all had a beautiful nice clean edge but
anyway that's optional although if you do it save the scraps since we can
actually add those to the crumb mixture with which we're gonna coat our cake and
if you're wondering what crumb mixture well the crumb mixture we're gonna make
with the extra batter since if everything goes according to plan after
you've done your 8 layers you should have just about this much batter left
which we will just spread out onto our baking sheet and we will cook that for
about 10 minutes at which point we'll go ahead and cut this up into smaller
pieces and the whole reason for this is if we left it whole I think those
outside edges might get too dark and possibly burnt and not burn honey burnt
like actually burnt so by making what's basically cake croutons I think this is
all gonna cook a lot more evenly so we will cut toss and go ahead and pop that
back in for about maybe 7 to 10 minutes more or until fairly well Brown
and by the way we can also do that with any of our trimmings from earlier and
that's it once that's all cooled we can go ahead and give it the old bag and
bash until we have some fairly fine crumbs and then once that's set we can
move on to the last major component our creamy filling slash frosting which
we're gonna make in a very cold bowl with a very cold whisk all right keep
those in the fridge until you're ready to use them and then into that we will
pour 2 pints a very cold heavy cream okay when your whipped cream it has to
be very cold especially if you're gonna do by hand like I do and of course go
ahead and use your electric beaters if you want but by doing this by hand I'm
gonna burn off the exact same amount of calories as 1 slice of cake give or take
300 calories or so and what we want to do here is whip this until we have soft
peaks or what would be a more accurate name floppy peaks and then what we'll do
once we've achieved those is go ahead and add the rest of our burnt honey as
well as a couple nice big spoons of sour cream and of course the regular sour
cream to cream ratio is gonna be up to you but I'm going for a fairly light
filling so I've like four parts cream to one part sour cream but anyway we'll go
ahead and add that and then continue whisking until we have fairly stiff
peaks all right we don't want to go too far and make butter here but we do want
this mixture getting fairly stiff because it has to hold up all those
layers and when I reach that stage it look like this and that's it once our
cream is done we can start to assemble and for this first layer I went around
and trimmed off the parchment right up to the cake which is gonna give us
something to slide our spatulas under and then we'll go ahead and transfer
around a generous cup at least of our whipped cream and spread that out as
evenly as we can almost up to the edge all right we don't have to go all the
way because the next layer is gonna press it down and speaking of the next
layer you want a place aside that has the divots from the air bubbles facing
up that way when we spread on the cream it's going to fill in and of course as
you're putting these on you're giving them a nice gentle press but anyway
we'll continue creaming and kagan until we have one layer of cake left and
unlike the other ones this last layer I like to put with the nice side up so
maybe Savior smooth that's best one for last and that's it we'll go ahead and
frost the top and if everything goes according
plan you should have just enough whipped cream to go around the sides as well
which I barely did and if you don't don't worry about it just tell people
you're doing the rustic version and you know there are so many activities
involved with cooking that I find very therapeutic and frosting a cake is way
up that list all right it just feels really good and it makes you feel really
good and because of that while you're doing this that cake is absorbing all
those good feels which is why when your guests eat this they feel good or at
least that's what I assume happens but anyway we'll go ahead and spread it over
the rest of our whipped cream and then to finish our cake off we're gonna cover
it with our crumbs and for that I'm gonna use the old Ricochet method where
we let the crumbs fall against like a bench scraper or a piece of paper like
this and they basically bounce onto the cake and stick onto the whipped cream
and personally I like to go for full coverage although you do see a lot of
versions where just the top is crumbed or just the sides are covered and the
top is left white but anyway presentations up to you I mean you are
for all the Wladimir of your crumb venire and it's up to you to decide how
you should be putting these on but anyway like I said I like to cover the
whole thing at which point we can do a little bit of cleanup around the base
and then I have some horrible news we have to refrigerate this overnight or
longer to enjoy it in all its glory and during that time that whipped cream is
going to kind of soak into the layers and they're gonna get even moister and
more luscious so do not try to eat this as soon as you make it although if you
did it probably would still be really good but I did go ahead and pop mine in
the fridge overnight and by the way I actually did cover in plastic I just
didn't film that since this video is so long and then a day later I went ahead
and pulled it out at which point I performed the always terrifying maneuver
of trying to transfer it onto a cake stand with too wobbly spatulas but as
you can see that went pretty well and speaking of things going well
cutting a nice neat first slice out of one of these big cakes is not the
easiest thing to do but much to my surprise that also worked out better
than expected so I grabbed a fork to go in for a taste and please note those
toasted crumbs are just not for a garnish they really do help accentuate
that caramelized honey flavor in the cake and then as far as the cake itself
go it really is shockingly light in texture
but with a very profound deep deep honey flavor right that tiny little amount of
bitterness we get from the burnt honey step really is the secret here and then
that slightly tangy whipped cream frosting is just absolutely perfect for
this since not only does it provide a little bit of acidity and of course a
lovely light texture but unlike most frostings it is not too sweet right the
only thing we use to sweeten that was that little bit of burnt honey
so to summarize I was very happy with how this came out and I celebrated by
cutting another slice so I could do a fully food style plate and then take
some pictures and more importantly some more but anyway that's it my take on
Russian honey cake and know it's not easy to make and it does take a lot of
time and effort but it is so so worth it and that's coming from someone that
doesn't even like cake so whether you're making this honey cake for your honey
sake or you're just in the mood for a challenging bake I really do hope you
give this a try soon so please follow the links below to get the ingredient
amounts the written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy
you