How to make
This amazing idea for a French village-style cake is suitable for all occasions and can be consumed with coffee/tea, as well as with whiskey and cognac ;)
You can garnish the Medovik cake with fresh or frozen fruit, jam and nuts/ biscuits.
How many cake layers the cake has, depends entirely on you!
Preheat the oven to 340°F (170°C) with the fan on, if you are going to bake two cake layers at the same time, or to 360°F (180°C) without a fan if you are going to bake only one cake layer.
Mix the sugar, honey, water, soda, salt and butter in a large pot and bring the mixture to a boiling point. Keep in mind, that the mixture foams and you should have a container, which is not shallow.
Cook the mixture, until it caramelizes, then remove it from the heat.
Immediately add the flour and stir with a spoon, until a dough is obtained (finish off the kneading carefully with your fingers).
Divide the dough into 7 equal pieces and cover them with a bowl or damp cloth, in order to prevent them from drying out.
Lightly spinkle your work surface with flour and roll out a thin circle of one portion of the dough. Try to make the cake layer into a round shape. You need to roll it out into a maximum thickness of 0.1″ (0.2 cm) and a diameter of about 10″ (25 cm), because they shrink slightly when baked.
Pierce the cake layer with a fork to make holes onto it, so that it does not rise when baking and bake it in a tray covered with baking paper (use the bottom of a small baking pan and a knife to cut out perfect round shapes.
Bake the cake layer for about 5-8 minutes or until it aquires a golden color. Immediately after baking, transfer it onto a wire rack to cool.
You can bake two cake layers at the same time, if you have switched on the oven fan.
While the last cake layers are baking, beat the liquid cream in a clean bowl with a mixer, until it turns into a white foamy mixture. Add the lemon juice, as much honey as you like and sour cream and mix briefly with the mixer, until the cream is homogenous. It should become thick, but not lumpy.
It is most convenient to assemble the cake in a cake ring or a cake tin with a removable bottom.
Put the first base in the detachable cake tin or cake ring and spread it with cream on top. The layer of cream should be the same thickness as the cake layer or a little more (it absorbs it).
Assemble the whole cake in this way, by finishing it off with cream on top.
If you have leftover bits from the cake layers, grind them in a chopper or blender, until crumbs are obtained and sprinkle them on top of the cake (you can also add ground nuts to them).
Leave the cake for at least half a day in the refrigerator, so that the cake layers can absorb cream. It is most delicious after 1-2 days in the refrigerator, once the cake layers have softened and absorbed the cream.
To decorate my French Village-Style Medovik Cake, I added cake layer crumbs and walnuts, pomegranate, a jam of my choice and scorched egg white.
Enjoy!