Russian Honey Cake – Food Wishes

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 you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 1,176,145

Rating: 4.9483695 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: yHQ-FkiP5Ws

Length: 12min 41sec (761 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 15 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/sillymerricat]

I make this at Easter and it’s amazing! Can’t wait to try his version

[u/mmousey]

I'll probably attempt a cupcake version of this recipe because that way, I'll have a small problem to deal with if all doesn't go as planned.

[u/SoFINsticated]

Life of Boris collab when?