Homemade Napoleon cake with custard
The butter for preparing the dough should be well chilled, and for the cream – at room temperature.
You can add more sugar to the cream, especially if you prefer very sweet desserts.
Wheat flour for the cream can be replaced with a little more starch, corn or potato.
Required ingredients:
Cakes:
- fresh egg – 1 pc.,
- cold water – 250 ml,
- salt - a pinch,
- butter – 250 grams,
- wheat flour – 700 grams.
Cream:
- milk – 1 liter,
- fresh eggs – 6 pcs.,
- vanillin - a pinch,
- granulated sugar – 250 grams,
- butter – 200 grams,
- wheat flour – 120 grams.
Description of the cooking process:
Sift the flour into a large bowl and add the diced butter.
Using a sharp knife, chop the combined ingredients into homogeneous crumbs.
Add a raw egg and a pinch of salt to cold water, and then beat everything thoroughly with a fork into a homogeneous mass.
Pour the resulting mixture into the flour crumbs and quickly knead the dough, and it is better to do this not with a spoon, but with your hands.
Finish kneading the dough on a floured surface. The finished dough should come together and not stick to your hands at all. Wrap it in cling film and place it in the refrigerator for a while.
For the cream, combine eggs and granulated sugar into a fluffy mass.
Heat the milk on the stove in a large saucepan. Pour about 1 glass of it into the eggs, and then add vanillin and flour in several stages, working intensively with a whisk all this time.
Very carefully add the egg mass into the hot milk and, stirring continuously, continue to cook over low heat for about 20 minutes after boiling. The cream should become so thick that a spoon leaves a mark on its surface. Once this happens, place the custard in a cool place to cool completely.
Meanwhile, divide the chilled dough into 8-9 parts, and roll each of them one by one into a thin crust and prick with a fork. This can be done either on a baking sheet or on parchment paper - depending on what shape you have in mind for the cake. It is important that while one piece of dough is being rolled out, the rest are in the refrigerator.
Bake the cakes in an oven preheated to 180 degrees, which will take about 10 minutes for each cake.
Allow the finished cakes to cool, and while this is happening, beat the cold custard with soft butter into a homogeneous fluffy mass. In principle, if you like lighter desserts, then you don’t need to add butter to the cream at all.
Place the first cake on a dish and very carefully coat it with cream.
Carefully place the second cake layer on top and continue the process as many times as necessary.
Trim each of the cakes a little so that their shape is perfect, and use the resulting crumbs as a sprinkle for the top of the cake.
You can cut and enjoy the Napoleon cake no earlier than 6 hours after assembly, otherwise the cakes will not have time to soak properly. However, for the sake of such a perfect taste, you can endure a little, because then the pleasure will be unforgettable.
Author of the recipe and photo: Svetlana Soroka
The ingredients for a real classic Napoleon will be needed:
For baking cakes:
- 200 g margarine for baking or butter
- 2 tbsp (volume 250 ml) premium wheat flour
- 1 egg CO
- 500 ml water
- A pinch of salt
To prepare the cream:
- 750 ml milk 3.5%
- 100 g butter 82.5%
- 12 tbsp. granulated sugar
- 8 tbsp. wheat flour
- 1 sachet (10 g) vanilla sugar
Another recipe for Napoleon cake
Recipe by Ekaterina Marutova
I would like to immediately note that the size of the cake was quite impressive, so if you do not need such a large cake, you can reduce the amount of ingredients in the recipe for this homemade Napoleon cake by at least 2 times. The cake in the photo turned out to be the size of a large square baking tray from the oven.
So,
Required:
For the test:
- flour - about 1 kg - from the refrigerator.
- margarine – 4 packs (200 grams each) – should be kept in the freezer before cooking.
- eggs - 2 pcs. also chilled in the refrigerator.
- salt -1 tsp.
- vinegar - 2 tbsp. l.
- cold water – approximately 400 ml (I’ll write about why during preparation).
Custard for Napoleon cake:
- milk - 4 glasses.
- sugar - 1.5 cups.
- eggs - 4 pcs.
- flour - 4 tbsp. l.
- butter – 300 g.
- vanillin – 1 pack.
- powdered sugar – 2 tbsp. l.
How to make Napoleon cake with custard
First let's make the dough.
Sift about half the flour onto the table, and use a coarse grater to grate all the margarine (which should be in the freezer before use). When you add margarine, you need to sprinkle it with flour at the same time. Having grated all the margarine, add the rest of the flour and mix quickly.
Mix eggs, vinegar and salt in a deep bowl or large measuring mug (with milliliter marks) and add water so that the entire volume is 500 ml. That is why in the recipe for the Napoleon cake dough, which I gave above, the approximate amount of water is indicated. We do everything quickly.
Pour this mixture into the margarine-flour mixture and try to knead the dough as quickly as possible. Divide the finished dough into 4 equal parts, place each in a separate bag and place in the refrigerator for 2-3 hours.
While our dough is in the refrigerator, prepare custard with milk and butter to soak the Napoleon cake.
Pour the milk into a deep saucepan, bring to a boil, adding sugar.
Separately, you need to combine the eggs with flour and gradually add half the hot milk with sugar, stir until smooth.
Then quickly pour the remaining milk and sugar into the mixture.
While stirring well, you need to bring the custard with milk to a boil and immediately turn it off. NO NEED to boil!
The custard base for the cream is ready; it needs to be cooled before combining with butter. Separately, you need to beat the softened butter, gradually add the cooled custard and vanilla to it.
When the time the dough has been in the refrigerator is up, take out one part and roll it out (sprinkling the table with flour) to a thickness of 4 mm.
Place the homemade dough (very similar to puff pastry) on a baking sheet (which needs to be slightly moistened at the edges), press the edges a little and use a fork to make punctures in several places across the entire surface of the crust. This is necessary so that the cake does not swell.
Place the baking sheet in the oven preheated to 200 degrees. The beautiful ruddy color that you will see will hint to you that the cake is ready. Take out the prepared Napoleon cake layer and place it on a wooden board.
We bake the remaining cakes according to the same principle.
When all the layers for the Napoleon cake are ready, you can assemble our cake: if you baked a small cake with only 2 layers, then you need to cut each layer in half. If the cakes are not quite even, they need to be shaped by cutting them with a sharp knife. We will need the scraps for sprinkling the cake.
Place the first cake on a board or baking sheet and pour over the custard, distributing it evenly over the entire surface. Place the second cake layer, press lightly and coat with cream again. We do this with all the cakes.
When the assembly is completed, carefully cover the top and sides with the remaining custard, grind the trimmings from the cakes in a mortar or using a blender and sprinkle the entire cake with crumbs.
Sprinkle powdered sugar on top and decorate as desired. It is advisable to let the cake soak in the refrigerator for several hours.
We cut the delicious homemade Napoleon cake with custard into portioned pieces, put the kettle on and serve our sweet dessert to the table.
Unusual "Napoleon" on beer
A cake made from beer dough turns out to be unusually tender and crumbly and smells very appetizing.
Mix 400 g of sifted flour and 250 g of cold butter, cut into thin slices. Chop the butter with a knife, mix with flour and pour in 200 ml of cold beer. Knead the dough; if it turns out too damp, add more flour according to your eye. Divide the dough into 10 pieces and chill them in the refrigerator.
Prepare the cream from 400 g of softened butter, cut into pieces, and 450 g of condensed milk - beat everything well, you can add vanilla to the cream if desired.
Then take pieces of dough out of the refrigerator one by one and roll them into cakes of the desired diameter, and then bake in the oven for no more than 10 minutes at a temperature of 180–210°C. Assemble the cake in the standard way, coat the cakes with cream, sprinkle with crushed cake, and then put it in the refrigerator to soak. Before serving, decorate the cake with fresh strawberries.
“Napoleon” in beer is a real delicacy!
