For the test:

• Wheat flour (premium grade) - 6 cups,
• Margarine or butter – 2 packs (200 grams each),
• Chicken eggs – 2 pieces,
• Salt – 1 teaspoon,
• Water - 450 ml.

For the custard:

• Chicken eggs – 4 pieces,
• Granulated sugar – 0.5 kg,
• Butter – 0.5 kg,
• Wheat flour – 4 tbsp. spoons,
• Cow's milk - 1 liter.

Cooking process:

Prepare the ingredients for the dough.

Please note that the cake dough must be kneaded using a knife. This way, cold butter will not melt from the warmth of your hands and will take the amount of flour that is needed. Otherwise, if you overdo it with flour, you risk getting a very hard dough. Whereas, ideally, thin cakes should be crispy and at the same time tender.

Lightly freeze margarine or butter, this will make it easier to work with. Sift flour onto a work surface. Finely chop the frozen butter into the flour with a knife, adding it from the edge to the center. As a result, you should get dry crumbs.

Now take a half-liter jar and break two chicken eggs into it, fill the rest of the jar with water. Shake the contents thoroughly with a fork, adding salt.

We form a slide from the resulting flour crumbs, make a depression in it and begin to add liquid from the jar.

Again everything will need to be “chopped” with a large knife,

those. You don’t even have to get your hands dirty in the dough.

We add the liquid mixture in parts until it runs out and work with a knife all the time.

Before your eyes, the sand crumbs turn into a homogeneous dough.

As a result of this work, you should get a homogeneous lump.

The finished dough for the Napoleon cake needs to be divided into 16 equal lumps, placed on a board, wrapped in cling film or a bag, and placed in the refrigerator for 20 - 30 minutes. Or freeze slightly in the freezer.

Then we take the dough out of the refrigerator and roll each lump into a thin flat cake, using a minimal amount of flour to sprinkle the table.

The cake should be as thin as possible, literally translucent. Any form. It's easier to roll out rectangles to fit the baking tray. With round cakes it is a little more difficult; they need to be cut raw or ready, and the quantity will be larger.

The dough is quite elastic, don’t be afraid to tear it when transferring it to a baking sheet. Even if this happens, there is nothing terrible about it. The cakes can be pricked with a fork in several places so that they swell less.

Place the baking sheet in the oven, which needs to be preheated to 180 - 200 degrees. Bake the base until a beautiful golden color. While one cake is baking, roll out the next one.

As a result, you should have 16 ruddy puff pastries, rectangular or slightly more round.

Custard for Napoleon cake

Don't look for a better recipe, I assure you, this one is perfect!

To prepare it, you need to beat chicken eggs and wheat flour in a deep bowl until smooth. It's easier to use a blender.

In a separate tall saucepan with a thick bottom, heat the milk and dissolve the granulated sugar in it. There is a lot of cream, the dishes should be capacious. And under no circumstances use an enamel or aluminum saucepan. In the first it will burn, in the second it will color the cream gray when whipped with butter.

Pour the egg mixture into the hot milk and sugar in a thin stream. Stir constantly while doing this. Cook the custard over low heat with constant stirring.

Cook until pureed. Cool the custard mixture to room temperature. Stir several times while cooling to prevent a crust from appearing.

The butter must be removed from the refrigerator in advance so that it becomes soft. Before combining with the cream, the butter must be whipped until smooth.

Only then add the cooled cream to the butter in small portions. Not the other way around!

Beat with a mixer until smooth.

All that remains is to assemble our gorgeous cake.

Assembling a puff Napoleon

I'll show you how to make sure your cake plate stays clean when you assemble it. A sheet of baking paper - this small detail is the little secret of your accuracy. Line the bottom of a dish or tray with parchment or paper.

Grease the first cake with custard, cover with the second and press to make the cake denser.

Repeat until all layers have been laid down. Don't forget to compact it. Napoleon must be tight!

It's time to remove the sheet of paper, hold the cake with one hand and pull out the sheet with the other.

You need to make crumbs from scraps or one cake. You can crumble them with your fingers, or you can put them in a bag and roll it with a rolling pin. Sprinkle the top and sides of the cake with the resulting crumbs. My sides are not sprinkled with anything. You can add chopped walnuts or chocolate grated into the crumbs to this crumb according to your taste, this will not make the cake any worse.

We leave the finished cake in the refrigerator for soaking and hardening of the cream, this may take at least 3 hours, it is better to wait overnight.

I think I’ve convinced you that making Napoleon at home is quite simple and affordable, the main thing is that you have the desire!

In the Guinness Book of Records, sweet Napoleon is mentioned as the largest cake weighing 1.5 tons, it was baked by culinary specialists in the city of Zelenograd.

This layer cake can be found in many cuisines around the world, but it will be called differently. For example, in England you will be served a “Vanilla slice”, but in Italy and France you can order a “Millefeuille” in any cafe and they will bring you a piece of an airy multi-layer cake, known to you as “Napoleon”, by the way, in translation Mille-feuille means "Thousand Layers". But Americans, like us, know this layer cake called “Napoleon”.

There are a great many stories about the creation of this famous dessert, but I would like to tell you one of the most unusual and, in my opinion, the most piquant. As you know, Bonaparte was a big fan of hitting on pretty girls. So one day, while flirting with another cute maid of honor, his wife caught him. And in order to get out of this very spicy situation, Napoleon told her about how he whispered in the ear of a beautiful girl about his newly invented recipe for a delicious cake, which, it turns out, is what made the girl so flushed! The wife pretended to believe her husband, but demanded proof. Bonaparte hastily dictated the recipe for the cake, a complete improvisation. Of course, Bonaparte's cook made some adjustments to the recipe. As a result, for breakfast, the couple had an extraordinary cake on the table, which got its name - Napoleon, in honor of its author.

Well, if we talk about the plausible history of the creation of the cake beloved by many, it was baked for the first time in 1912 by Moscow confectioners for the 100th anniversary of the victory over the French and gave it the name.

All you have to do is defeat your “Frenchman” in the kitchen; the step-by-step photo recipe presented today will help you. Perhaps this cake will become your signature sweet dish, like mine. I have been baking it for more than 10 years, and I thank Natalya Pyatkova for the recipe.

Best regards, Anyuta.

Enjoy your family tea parties!

Hello! Do you like Napoleon cake? Want to make it for tea? Consider yourself lucky. In this article you will find not only a good recipe for Napoleon cake at home, but also some subtleties of preparation.
And you need to know them, believe me, in order to achieve the perfect combination of unleavened cakes with sweet cream. After all, it is precisely for this incomparable zest that we love dessert, isn’t it?

A video recipe for Napoleon cake will be useful for novice confectioners. And experienced cooks will be able to get acquainted with new recipes for crust dough.

I was less fortunate in my time. There was no Internet, at least not accessible to everyone. I had to pry the secrets of the delicacy out of my friends. Find the best option through trial and error. Napoleon didn’t work out, and that’s all. Sometimes it got ridiculous, because the cake is actually simple.

What I'm getting at is that you carefully read all the stages of preparation. Then everything is guaranteed to work out. A step-by-step recipe for Napoleon cake with photos will help you.

The most delicious Napoleon cake recipe

I’ll make a reservation right away that I wouldn’t offend anyone. The most delicious Napoleon cake recipe in the world, of course, in my opinion. But I think you will like it too. Its advantage is 2 creams, custard and butter. The finished product turns out wonderful. Try it and you will see for yourself.

Briefly about what we need to do.

• Prepare quick puff pastry.
• Cool it for one and a half to two hours. That's the minimum. If you prepare the dough in advance, then honor and praise to you.
• Brew cream for soaking.
• Beat buttercream.
• Bake the cakes.
• Assemble the cake.

Preparing for the test

• Margarine 400 gr. (you can use butter if desired)
• 4 eggs
• Flour 4 tbsp. (by weight 750 gr.)
• Lemon juice 2 tbsp (you can take vinegar 7 - 9 percent)
• Water 0.75 tbsp. (st.200 ml)
• Add a pinch of salt.

Custard ingredients

• Milk 350 ml.
• Sugar 100 gr.
• Butter 30 gr.
• Vanilla sugar 2 tsp.
• Corn starch 30 gr.
• A pinch of salt
• Eggs 2 pcs.

Buttercream Products

• Condensed milk 250 gr.
• Butter 200 gr.

I would like to note right away that the margarine should be very chilled. You can even put it in the freezer for a while so that it can be grated better.

Step-by-step dough kneading and baking cakes

Allow the baked cakes to cool. You probably noticed the fact that the edges of the cakes turn out uneven? There is such a thing. If you want to trim, it is better to do this after smearing with cream and soaking. Otherwise the cakes will simply break. After all, they are so fragile and thin.

Making custard

Buttercream cooks much faster. You just need to beat soft butter with condensed milk. Three minutes - and the cream is ready.

Now it’s time to reveal the secret of the two creams. Custard is the main one. Without it, puff pastries will be dry. It literally permeates them through and through. And fatty oil enriches the taste. The combination of creams makes the taste of Napoleon cake exquisite and unique. Truly the most delicious in the world.

Custard and butter cream should be combined and whipped for 2 - 3 minutes until a homogeneous consistency is obtained.

Assembling the Napoleon cake

• Place the cakes neatly but tightly on top of each other. The cream will spread to the edges. To do this, place a little more in the middle.
• To ensure there is enough cream to evenly coat all layers, divide it roughly by the number of cake layers.
• If some shortbread is broken, put it in the middle, no one will notice the error.

The handsome man is ready. Enjoy your tea!

The phrase “Soviet Napoleon cake” is a kind of sign of quality, may the younger generation forgive me. But since the name of the recipe appears on the Internet, it means that it has stood the test of time and is worthy of your attention.

So, here is a Soviet recipe for Napoleon cake at home in the present day.

The test will require

• Butter 400 gr.
• Flour 600 gr.
• Salt 0.5 tsp.
• Water 150 ml.
• One egg
• Vinegar 9 percent 1 tbsp.

For the cream you need to prepare

• Milk 1 l.
• Eggs 4 pcs.
• Sugar 350 gr.
• Flour 4 tbsp.
• Butter 150 gr.
• Vanillin 1 pack.

Step-by-step preparation of puff pastry

Step-by-step cream recipe

Baking the cake layers and assembling the cake

Now you can invite them to the table and treat your loved ones with a tasty treat. The recipe will be appreciated, rest assured. The Soviet version simply melts in your mouth.

Homemade Napoleon Cake Recipes

The recipes listed above can be called classic. The dough there is prepared in water. Homemade recipes for this famous dessert involve the use of dairy products. Why do cakes taste more interesting?

The dough is prepared in the usual way. The flour is ground with butter or margarine, then the liquid ingredients are added and the dough is kneaded, which must be left in the cold for 2 hours.

Option 1. Milk dough recipe

• Margarine 250 gr
• One egg
• Milk 1 tbsp (tbsp 200 ml.)
• Sugar 1 tbsp.
• Soda 0.5 tsp. (quenched with vinegar)
• Flour for dough 0.5 kg.
• Flour for adding 300 gr.

Option 2. Dough for Napoleon with sour cream

• Margarine 250 grams
• Flour 3 tbsp.
• Sour cream 1 tbsp.
• One egg
• Soda 1 tsp. (quench with vinegar).

I personally tried homemade versions. The cakes turn out exceptionally delicious. Prepare and don't hesitate
How to grease the cakes? I recommend the delicious cream “Plombir”.

To prepare the ice cream custard you will need

• Milk 400 ml.
• One egg
• Starch 40 gr.
• Sugar 200 gr.
• Butter 100 gr.
• Cream 200 gr.

A video recipe will help you prepare an extraordinary cream. Please take a look, it's interesting. Here we also describe in detail how to prepare the cake at home.

Now you are fully armed. You can start baking. Enjoy your troubles and have a delicious, tender cake on the table!

I have been baking Napoleon according to this recipe for 10 years now and this cake has become my signature dish!!! In our family, Napoleon cake is always a holiday! If anyone has a different opinion regarding this famous dessert, I can say with complete confidence that you have not tried the real Napoleon. All the quick options made from ready-made puff pastry are not even close to it. Tasty, but not the same.

Unfortunately, in our time, the store-bought equivalent bears little resemblance to the classic Napoleon cake, so the only option to try a real, most delicious layer cake with delicate custard is to prepare it yourself at home. It's a hassle, but it's worth it!

I hope my step-by-step photo recipe is useful to you.

To prepare you will need very simple and affordable products:

Ingredients:

For the test:
- Wheat flour (premium grade) - 6 cups,
- Margarine or butter – 2 packs (200 grams each),
- Chicken eggs – 2 pieces,
- Salt – 1 teaspoon,
- Water - 450 ml.

For the custard:
- Chicken eggs – 4 pieces,
- Granulated sugar – 0.5 kg,
- Butter – 0.5 kg,
- Wheat flour – 4 tbsp. spoons,
- Cow's milk – 1 liter.

Preparing the cakes:

Please note that the cake dough must be kneaded using a knife. This way, cold butter will not melt from the warmth of your hands and will take the amount of flour that is needed. Otherwise, if you overdo it with flour, you risk getting a very hard dough. Whereas, ideally, thin cakes should be crispy and at the same time tender.

Lightly freeze margarine or butter, this will make it easier to work with. Sift flour onto a work surface. Finely chop the frozen butter into the flour with a knife, adding it from the edge to the center. As a result, you should get dry crumbs.

Now take a half-liter jar and break two chicken eggs into it, fill the rest of the jar with water. Shake the contents thoroughly with a fork, adding salt.

We form a slide from the resulting flour crumbs, make a depression in it and begin to add liquid from the jar.

Again everything will need to be “chopped” with a large knife,

Those. You don’t even have to get your hands dirty in the dough.

We add the liquid mixture in parts until it runs out and work with a knife all the time.

Before your eyes, the sand crumbs turn into a homogeneous dough.

As a result of this work, you should get a homogeneous lump.

The finished dough for the Napoleon cake needs to be divided into 16 equal lumps, placed on a board, wrapped in cling film or a bag, and placed in the refrigerator for 20 - 30 minutes. Or freeze slightly in the freezer.

Then we take the dough out of the refrigerator and roll each lump into a thin flat cake, using a minimal amount of flour to sprinkle the table.

The cake should be as thin as possible, literally translucent. Any form. It's easier to roll out rectangles to fit the baking tray. With round cakes it is a little more difficult; they need to be cut raw or ready, and the quantity will be larger.

The dough is quite elastic, don’t be afraid to tear it when transferring it to a baking sheet. Even if this happens, there is nothing terrible about it. The cakes can be pricked with a fork in several places so that they swell less.

Place the baking sheet in the oven, which needs to be preheated to 180 - 200 degrees. Bake the base until a beautiful golden color. While one cake is baking, roll out the next one.

As a result, you should have 16 ruddy puff pastries, rectangular or slightly more round.

Preparing the custard:

Don't look for a better recipe, I assure you, this one is perfect!

To prepare it, you need to beat chicken eggs and wheat flour in a deep bowl until smooth. It's easier to use a blender.

In a separate tall saucepan with a thick bottom, heat the milk and dissolve the granulated sugar in it. There is a lot of cream, the dishes should be capacious. And under no circumstances use an enamel or aluminum saucepan. In the first it will burn, in the second it will color the cream gray when whipped with butter.

Pour the egg mixture into the hot milk and sugar in a thin stream. Stir constantly while doing this. Cook the custard over low heat with constant stirring.

Cook until pureed. Cool the custard mixture to room temperature. Stir several times while cooling to prevent a crust from appearing.

The butter must be removed from the refrigerator in advance so that it becomes soft. Before combining with the cream, the butter must be whipped until smooth.

Only then add the cooled cream to the butter in small portions. Not the other way around!

Beat with a mixer until smooth.

All that remains is to assemble our gorgeous cake.

Assembly:

I'll show you how to make sure your cake plate stays clean when you assemble it. A sheet of baking paper - this small detail is the little secret of your accuracy. Line the bottom of a dish or tray with parchment or paper.

Grease the first cake with custard, cover with the second and press to make the cake denser.

Repeat until all layers have been laid down. Don't forget to compact it. Napoleon must be tight!

It's time to remove the sheet of paper, hold the cake with one hand and pull out the sheet with the other.

You need to make crumbs from scraps or one cake. You can crumble them with your fingers, or you can put them in a bag and roll it with a rolling pin. Sprinkle the top and sides of the cake with the resulting crumbs. My sides are not sprinkled with anything. You can add chopped walnuts or chocolate grated into the crumbs to this crumb according to your taste, this will not make the cake any worse.

We leave the finished cake in the refrigerator for soaking and hardening of the cream, this may take at least 3 hours, it is better to wait overnight.

I think I’ve convinced you that making Napoleon at home is quite simple and affordable, the main thing is that you have the desire!

In the Guinness Book of Records, sweet Napoleon is mentioned as the largest cake weighing 1.5 tons, it was baked by culinary specialists in the city of Zelenograd.

This layer cake can be found in many cuisines around the world, but it will be called differently. For example, in England you will be served a “Vanilla slice”, but in Italy and France you can order a “Millefeuille” in any cafe and they will bring you a piece of an airy multi-layer cake, known to you as “Napoleon”, by the way, in translation Mille-feuille means "Thousand Layers". But Americans, like us, know this layer cake called “Napoleon”.

There are a great many stories about the creation of this famous dessert, but I would like to tell you one of the most unusual and, in my opinion, the most piquant. As you know, Bonaparte was a big fan of hitting on pretty girls. So one day, while flirting with another cute maid of honor, his wife caught him. And in order to get out of this very spicy situation, Napoleon told her about how he whispered in the ear of a beautiful girl about his newly invented recipe for a delicious cake, which, it turns out, is what made the girl so flushed! The wife pretended to believe her husband, but demanded proof. Bonaparte hastily dictated the recipe for the cake, a complete improvisation. Of course, Bonaparte's cook made some adjustments to the recipe. As a result, for breakfast, the couple had an extraordinary cake on the table, which got its name - Napoleon, in honor of its author.

Well, if we talk about the plausible history of the creation of this beloved cake, it was baked for the first time in 1912 by Moscow confectioners for the 100th anniversary of the victory over the French and gave it the name Napoleon.

All you have to do is defeat your “Frenchman” in the kitchen; the step-by-step photo recipe presented today will help you. Perhaps this cake will become your signature sweet dish, like mine. I have been baking it for more than 10 years, and I thank Natalya Pyatkova for the recipe.

Hooray! It has been found - the simplest recipe for Napoleon cake! There is a minimum of products, minimal labor, but no difficulties at all! According to this recipe, even a novice housewife can easily bake a delicious homemade Napoleon. Tested repeatedly - by my friends and by me personally!

I love Napoleon cake!! This is my favorite cake since childhood, and when I was little (and not so little, up to 20 years old for sure!) I always asked my mother to make this particular cake for my birthday! And now I delight my family with my favorite delicacy. Everyone in our family loves Napoleon, and I think that many readers agree that this is the most delicious cake in the world!

Just one thing - Napoleon also seemed to me one of the most difficult recipes. I tried several of them: starting from the classic one, made from homemade puff pastry, continuing with a simplified shortbread version - also tasty, but lighter; and ending with a quick cake made from ready-made puff pastry - with strawberries or cherries. All of these options are tasty and good in their own way. But one day I was treated to a delicious, delicate cake, soaked in aromatic cream, sprinkled with delicate crumbs, and the cakes just melted in my mouth!

And how the recipe for the simplest Napoleon surprised me with its minimalism. It turns out that the pinnacle of culinary skill and the crowning glory of a gourmet’s fantasy can be baked easily and quickly! I suggest you try it too! The cake turns out very big and delicious.

Glass volume 200 ml, flour = 130g, sugar = 200g.

Ingredients:

For the cakes:

• 3 cups flour (390-400 g);
• 250 g butter;
• 100 ml water.

For the custard:

• 1 liter of milk;
• 2 eggs;
• 300 g sugar (1.5 cups);
• 2 packets of vanilla sugar or a couple of pinches of vanillin;
• 2 heaped tablespoons of flour.

How to bake:

Let's knead the dough for the cakes: after sifting the flour into a bowl, grate cold butter there on a coarse grater.

Grind it into crumbs with your hands and pour in cold water.

Quickly mix the dough with your hands and form it into a lump - well, even if it is not uniform, the main thing is that it sticks together! You don’t need to add a lot of flour, so you can add more flour than normal, but there are different types of flour; At first it seems that the dough is sticky, but then you will realize that the dry and liquid ingredients are just in balance.

After rolling the dough into a ball, place it in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. That's how simple it is! Much lighter than puff pastry.

While the dough is cooling, prepare two sheets of parchment, a rolling pin, a baking sheet, a knife and what you will use as a template for cutting the cakes: a lid from a large pan, a plate or a cardboard. The cake can be given a round, square or rectangular shape.

Having taken out the dough, roll it into a thick sausage and cut it into 8 parts. To make them equal, it is convenient to do this: cut in half, then each half in half again - into quarters; and halve them again - into eighths.

Turn on the oven and let it heat up to 200C.

Place a sheet of parchment on the table and sprinkle with flour. Place one piece of dough on the paper, sprinkle it with flour and roll it out, dusting it with flour and turning it over, into a thin crust. The thinner the better - so that it directly “glows”! Just try to roll it out more evenly, otherwise it may bake unevenly: in thin places it’s already fried, and in thick ones it’s still not baked. So roll it out evenly and thinly, about 2 millimeters. And prick it with a fork so that it does not swell during baking. It’s even more convenient to roll out the cake between two sheets of parchment.

Transfer the cake directly with the parchment to a baking sheet and put it in the oven.

Thin cakes are baked very quickly: 5 minutes at 200C, and you're done! There is no need to over-dry, because they will become brittle. Gilded - and that’s enough!

In the meantime, one cake is in the oven, on a second sheet of parchment we roll out the next one, as when baking a honey cake - thanks to this “conveyor”, things go cheerfully and cheerfully.

Having taken out the cake, immediately, while hot, apply the template and cut it to shape. If you hesitate, it may crumble. But that’s okay, the broken cake layers can be placed in the middle of the cake. For now, put the scraps in a bowl - they will be needed for the crumbs. And carefully place the cakes in a stack on a dish.

Now all the cakes are ready! You can make custard. I usually make a special “Napoleonic” cream for this cake, but here the recipe is a little different, but I liked it for its simplicity.

So, divide a liter of milk in half. We put one half on the fire in a non-stick saucepan and let it heat up.

In the second half liter of milk add sugar, eggs, vanillin, flour and beat everything with a mixer or whisk so that there are no lumps left.

When the milk on the stove begins to boil, pour the whipped mixture into the boiling milk in a thin stream. Stir before pouring in if the sugar has had time to settle to the bottom of the bowl after whisking.

And cook the cream, stirring all the time, until it thickens. I cooked for 5-6 minutes over medium heat and then, after boiling, for another minute or two on less than medium heat.

At first the cream is liquid, but don’t let this worry you: in the end it will turn out to be the desired thickness. At first it flows like milk; then, starting to boil, it becomes thicker and gurgles like semolina porridge. The finished hot cream may still seem runny, but as it cools, it becomes even thicker. Room temperature cream is just the right consistency to coat and thoroughly soak the cakes.

We coat the cakes, placing them on top of each other. Handle the cakes with care - they are very fragile.

We also grease the top cake and sides of the cake with cream. Crush the trimmings into fine crumbs with your hands and sprinkle the top and sides of the cake.

Now, a little patience... lick the cake and wait for it to soak.

Ideally, until the morning, but if you really want to, you can taste it after a couple of hours.

But it’s better to cultivate willpower, since the soaked cake is much tastier!

This is exactly “the same”, familiar from childhood, the taste of real “Napoleon”! And I’m very glad that making my favorite cake turned out to be so easy. I am happy to share with you; It’s great if your family loves the recipe too!

You have asked me more than once for Napoleon’s simple recipe (by the way, I described it a couple of times on my Instagram, under the photo there, and received rave reviews:). But for everyone’s convenience, I feel it’s time to tell you about my, perhaps, most favorite cake according to a family recipe here on the site.

Our Napoleon is fantastic without unnecessary modesty! Just the way it smells when it soaks in the room or when you cut it... And it literally melts in your mouth!

The cakes are made from puff pastry (NEVER purchased, of course). It is not at all like the dough of puff “ears”, when you bite into them, the crumbs fall onto your chest, and it seems that everything inside is empty. I am categorically against such cakes in Napoleon, although I have tried this more than once :)

The Napoleon puff pastry that we made at home is completely different. Just butter (no margarine!), flour and a little water. The cooking method is very simple.

As for the cream, classic Napoleon is often prepared with custard, but there are other options. Our family recipe cake is made with buttercream and cream cheese (like Philadelphia - ). Yes, before, of course, during my childhood, no one knew about such cheese, so they added a couple of spoons of rich sour cream :)

The cake is soaked in an amazing way, the cream (despite the fact that it is oily) is the most delicate. And most importantly - no cloying. After all, what could be worse when the cake is greasy and cloying?

I often bake our Napoleon according to a family recipe on “special” occasions (family holidays, birthdays of loved ones, New Year). And one thing always remains the same: a lot of compliments and praise literally “fall down” on the cake. And if I bake several different cakes (which happens quite often:), then Napoleon is always the first to sell out, simply with lightning speed!

And despite my love for modern tall cakes with cream cheese cream, ganache and erotic streaks of glaze, Napoleon has always been and remains in first place among my favorites. Why? Just because... it’s impossible not to love him :) Probably, it came from childhood, when as a big family, together with my grandparents, we gathered at the New Year’s table, and on the first day of the New Year in the morning we always drank tea with the most delicious Napoleon. And my beloved aunt taught me how to cook it. I have never eaten such a delicious cake anywhere or from anyone before...

Still don't like Napoleon? It means you just didn’t cook it according to the correct recipe :) Let my simple Napoleon recipe delight you and your loved ones, warm you and unite you at the festive table.

Enough preface!

The most delicious Napoleon: a simple recipe

Ingredients for the crust:

(from the specified quantity a cake d=24 cm is obtained from 8 layers)

• premium flour – 2 cups (~400 g);
• butter (cold) – 250 g;
• cold water – 3-4 tablespoons;
• salt – 1/3 tsp.

Ingredients for cream:

• milk – 10 tbsp;
• sugar – 7-10 tbsp. (to taste);
• butter at room temperature – 230 g;
• (or fat sour cream) – 3-5 tbsp. with a slide.

Preparation:

I repeat: the cooking method is simple, just do everything step by step without deviating from the recipe. Perhaps the most painstaking work is to bake all the cakes carefully and patiently, rolling them out thinly and NOT keeping them in the oven!

Cakes:

Sift the flour into a large bowl, add salt, chop the cold butter with a knife. Using your fingers, quickly rub the butter into the flour (so that it does not melt) into fine crumbs.

Add water (a little at a time; you may need a little more) and knead the dough - its consistency should be such that you can easily form it into a ball. It may stick to your hands a little, but try not to add more flour (except just a little), otherwise the structure of the cakes will be different!

Wrap the dough in film and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

After taking out the dough, divide it into 8 equal parts. Yes, it’s better to put the rest of the dough back in the refrigerator and take it out piece by piece.

Take the bottom of a springform pan (24 cm) and use a rolling pin to roll out the dough into a thin layer according to the pan. If the surface is not completely smooth, that’s okay!

Don't have a springform pan? Roll out the dough THIN on parchment paper and before placing in the oven, cut out a circle using a suitable sized plate.

Using a fork, prick the rolled out dough in several places ( NOT MUCH, because this will prevent it from separating and rising, which is very important for cakes!) and place in an oven preheated to 180 degrees for 5-6 minutes. Don't overdry! The cakes will immediately begin to rise. If they're browned, take them out!

Repeat the procedure as many times as necessary. If there are a lot of scraps left, you can make another full cake. Or use the last cake (from scraps) for crumbs (you will need it in any case).

Don’t be alarmed if the cakes come out “bloated” and uneven (see photo below:). Everything is going according to plan!

Cream:

Add sugar to the milk (if you want it sweeter, add 10-11 spoons, I add 7-8), heat in a saucepan until the sugar is completely dissolved. Cool completely.

Beat butter at room temperature with a mixer, adding cooled milk syrup in small portions. Don't rush, the whole procedure usually takes about 5 minutes. The oil should become very fluffy and increase in volume.

Add cream cheese (or fatty, non-acidic sour cream) into the finished cream and stir gently with a whisk (I don’t recommend using a mixer, the cream may “separate”).

Cake assembly:

Place a little cream on the dish/stand where you will assemble the cake, spread it a little, place the first cake layer on top (this should be done so that the cake does not slide or move around).

Apply a few spoons of cream onto the cake (don’t be sorry:), spread evenly with a knife or spatula over the entire surface.

Cover with the second cake layer. And now attention - ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT POINTS– the cakes must be pressed, in no case leaving empty spaces inside, otherwise the cake will not be soaked, and it will simply look crooked and uneven.

So: put the cream, smooth it out, cover it with cake, PRESSED(so that all the swollen “bubbles” burst). Don’t be confused by the fact that the cakes themselves may break during the assembly process. Believe me, when the cake is completely soaked and “set”, it will not fall apart in parts. And it can be cut afterwards without any problems either!

Be sure to apply enough cream to the last cake layer and to the sides as well. It holds its shape well and does not leak.

Top with crumbles and/or walnuts (optional). Leave the cake to soak for the first few hours at room temperature (unless it’s hot at home!), and then put it in the refrigerator (at least overnight). In general, homemade Napoleon becomes even tastier on the 2nd or 3rd day (if it survives :) - by this point the cakes will be so soaked that words cannot describe it! :)

Enjoy your family tea party!

P.S. You can find all the recipes for my best cakes.