Classic Napoleon - a recipe for Soviet-era Napoleon

Have you long pleased yourself with Napoleon? No, not a crumbling puff sole with greasy putty between the cakes, but a real grandmother's, according to a homemade recipe that melts in your mouth and smells of childhood? On New Year's Eve, I was sorting through my cookbooks and found an old Soviet-era recipe from Napoleon, which (it's scary to say!) is over forty years old! Let's open the yellowed page, launch the "culinary time machine" back half a century and bake the classic Napoleon with custard.

I must say that the old Soviet recipes were not too demanding on the ingredients. Instead of butter, you could take a sandwich or even margarine, replace sour cream with kefir ... But we will take the opportunity to reproduce the classic Napoleon cake recipe in the most elite version.

For the test we need:

• 0.5 cups of any fat, we will take butter (120 gr);
• 0.5 cups of sour cream or kefir (125 gr);
• 0.5 cups of sugar (100 gr);
• 0.5 teaspoon of baking soda.
• flour - until the desired consistency is obtained.

How to cook a classic Napoleon with custard recipe at home

How to make dough for Napoleon

Pour the sugar rate into the softened (but not melted) butter. To balance the taste, add a pinch of salt, for flavor - a bag of vanilla sugar or a pinch of vanillin.

With a whisk, mixer or blender, grind the sugar-butter mixture until the grains of sugar disappear.

Weigh sour cream into a bowl and mix everything until smooth.

We begin to gradually add flour mixed with soda. Knead the dough for Napoleon with a paddle or wooden spatula.

Work in the bowl until the dough is stiff enough to hand knead.

We shift the dough for the Napoleon cake onto the board and then knead with our hands, gradually adding flour.

In the finished state, it should be uniform, elastic and not sticky to the hands.

Wrap the ball of dough in cling film and refrigerate for at least an hour.

How to cook cakes for Napoleon

We divide the ripened dough into 15-16 pieces about the size of a ping-pong ball. We will roll out the juices on sheets of baking paper, lightly dusted with flour.

The rolled juices should be thin and so transparent that the pattern on the table can be seen through them.

Using a shape that is suitable in diameter (a dessert plate, a lid from a pan, etc.), we cut out cakes of the same shape and size.

We put sheets of parchment with rolled and molded juices in a pile. We glue the scraps of dough together, knead and roll out the juices, and bake a layer of arbitrary shape from the last leftovers. This will be a blank for sprinkling, with which we will decorate our classic Napoleon.

How to bake cakes for Napoleon

We heat the oven to 200 degrees. Before planting in the oven, prick the formed cake with a fork or cut it so that the dough does not swell with bubbles during baking. We bake the layers until a light blush. Be careful, they reach the desired degree of readiness very quickly, literally in a matter of minutes.

While still warm, remove the finished juices from the paper and put them in a pile.

Flat cakes intended for pouring the cake are brought to a thicker color. You need to handle ready-made juices very carefully - they are very fragile and crumbly. While the custard for Napoleon is being prepared, it is better to place them directly in a stack in a suitable container, cover with a lid or a napkin and put them in a cool, dry place. Thus, cakes can be stored for up to 2-3 days.

When you feel from your own experience how much effort and time it takes to prepare only the flour base of the classic Napoleon cake, you immediately understand why modern recipes try to simplify and facilitate the technology as much as possible. It is not for nothing that in my culinary notebook there is an inscription in the margins: “Knead and roll to exhaustion”! By the way, in our family, these operations are traditionally the male prerogative, the sacred pre-holiday duty of the head of the family.

Fortunately, the preparation of Napoleon cake custard is not so long and laborious, although it requires special care and accuracy. I designed the preparation of custard for Napoleon as a separate step-by-step recipe with a photo, which you can go to at the link above. After you bring it to life, you will have such a classic creamy custard as in the photo.

How to cook Napoleon cake

We cover the dish with a piece of parchment and proceed to the assembly of the dessert.

Each cake is evenly smeared with cream.

The most difficult thing here is to evenly distribute the cream on all the cakes. If we have, as expected according to the recipe, 16 cakes came out (spare ones for sprinkling are not considered), and the cream is whipped to the required splendor, then 2 tablespoons of cream are required for each layer.

Distribute the rest of the cream on the top and sides of the cake.

How to decorate Napoleon

The cakes left for sprinkling are first broken by hand, then crushed with a rolling pin or pusher. Coarsely chopped walnuts can be added to the prepared crumb.

We decorate the top and sides of the cake with crumbs, cover it with a lid and send it to a cool place (in the refrigerator) for a day. The classic Napoleon of the Soviet era makes it possible for housewives to cook it a few days before the desired date and freeze it. This homemade cake will only become tastier and more tender!

A true classic Napoleon is light and delicate. It melts in your mouth and doesn't feel greasy or overly sweet.

Yes, it will take a lot of work and time, but the result is worth it! My real old recipe for Napoleon of the Soviet era gives you the opportunity to cook the most delicious, that same real "grandmother's" cake with the taste of childhood, holidays and gifts!