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Napoleon Cake with Cream "Plombir"

Another Napoleon cake recipe. This cake is loved in our family, so I've tried many recipes and found that perfect one, the recipe that, in my opinion, makes the ideal Napoleon cake. The cake is moderately sweet, the layers are crispy and crumbly, yet tender and velvety. And the custard cream combined with whipped cream, delicate, airy, creamy - simply delightful!

Dough:

Butter

1 1/4 cups

Flour

3 1/2 cups

Sour Cream (20-25%)

3/4 cup + 2 tbsp

Eggs

Salt

a pinch

Cream:

Milk

2 1/8 cups

Sugar

1 cup

Cornstarch

3 tbsp

Eggs

Butter

7 tbsp

Salt

a pinch

Vanilla Extract

2 tsp

Heavy Cream (33%)

1 1/2 cups

To prepare the Napoleon cake, take out frozen butter from the freezer (it should be well frozen) and put it into a large bowl. Add flour, take a grater (coarse one), and grate the cold butter, stirring it periodically with the flour, do it quickly so the butter doesn't melt.

You can also do the same using a blender with a bowl, gradually adding flour and pieces of cold butter. This is if the blender is small. But if the blender is large, you'll do it all in 1-2 minutes at once.

To the resulting crumb mixture of flour and butter, add sour cream with eggs (I mixed them separately in a different container) and a pinch of salt. Quickly mix everything together, the dough will be uneven - that's normal.

Similarly, you can do all this using a mixer, using a paddle attachment.

Now simply gather the dough into a lump on the table, no need to knead it, do it quickly. Then wrap the dough in plastic wrap or put it in a bag and refrigerate for 2-3 hours, or overnight for better results.

Prepare the custard base for the cream. Heat the milk on the stove until it's almost boiling.

In a separate container, mix sugar, salt, cornstarch, and eggs, stirring until homogeneous. Now pour a portion of the hot milk (about 1/3) into the egg-starch mixture, mix well, then pour it back into the saucepan with the rest of the milk. Cook the cream over medium heat until thickened, stirring constantly with a whisk.

Remove from the heat, add butter and vanilla extract to the cream, mix well. It should be thick but not too dense and have a smooth texture. As the cream cools, it will thicken even more.

Transfer the cream to a bowl, cover with plastic wrap touching the surface, and let it cool. First at room temperature, then in the refrigerator, it should chill well.

Once the dough has chilled well, take it out and divide it into 10 parts. Place the dough pieces in a dish, cover with plastic wrap, and return to the refrigerator.

Take one piece of dough at a time, roll it out into a thin layer (lightly dust the table and the dough with flour) and cut out circles using a lid (or a plate). My lid has a diameter of 25 cm. Place the dough circle on parchment paper for baking, and don't forget to make holes in the dough with a fork to prevent it from puffing up too much in the oven.

Use the dough scraps to make more layers. In the end, I got 14 layers.

Bake the layers in a preheated oven to 200°F. I bake two layers at a time using convection for about 7-10 minutes, adjust according to your oven.

Stack the baked layers on top of each other. During baking, the layers may shrink in diameter and change shape, so I even them out, it's convenient to do this with scissors.

Cut one layer, the most beautiful one, into 8 pieces for decoration, and crumble one last one along with the scraps for decoration.

Now let's finish preparing the cream. I always put the cream, mixer beaters, and the bowl for whipping in the freezer for 30 minutes. This makes it easier and faster to whip the cream. Whip the cream with a mixer until it's fluffy and thick.

Then, gradually add the chilled custard base (custard cream) and whip it (mix it) at low speed, we just need to combine these two creams.

Spread the layers with the cream, using about 2 heaping tablespoons of cream for each layer. Coat the sides of the cake well.

Then, I coated the sides of the cake with crumbs. From the remaining crumbs and cream, I made 8 small balls and rolled them in cocoa. I placed them on the cake and decorated with triangular pieces of the crust, which I dusted with powdered sugar. Let the cake rest in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours, preferably overnight. The perfect Napoleon Cake is ready!

You can skip all this decoration and simply coat the cake with crumbs. The weight of the cake is about 4.4 lbs, height - 4.3-4.7 inches, diameter - 8.3-8.7 inches.

(4/5)