Cake
Description
Homemade tea‑time pastry. For the cream you can choose thick sour cream or cream. A combination of sour cream and cottage cheese also works, but such a cream should be blended with a mixer until smooth. The layers turn out porous and absorb easily. Choose nuts to your taste—hazelnuts, walnuts, or almonds. The finished cake can be decorated as you like. 1. Drizzle with chocolate glaze or softened chocolate. 2. Sprinkle with chopped nuts and add prunes. 3. You can sprinkle the finished cake with chocolate crumbs. 4. Leave the top part of the cake white to add a contrasting decoration of prunes and chocolate, as in this recipe.
Instructions
- 1
Step 1
Prepare the ingredients.
- 2
Step 2
Beat the eggs with sugar and salt.
- 3
Step 3
Add softened butter.
- 4
Step 4
We pour the tincture (or another strong and aromatic alcohol) and add a little sour cream. Mix everything.
- 5
Step 5
Add cocoa and a cup of flour, add the dissolved baking soda and knead the dough. Add the flour in small portions and keep stirring constantly. At this stage, add about 300 grams of flour.
- 6
Step 6
The finished dough is too soft. Cover it with plastic wrap and chill it for 30 minutes.
- 7
Step 7
The dough has cooled and become thicker. Add a little more flour and mix everything together. Divide the dough into 6 parts.
- 8
Step 8
Roll out each piece of dough on parchment and cut it into shape. Circle, square, or heart, your choice.
- 9
Step 9
Bake the layers at 180 °C for about 12 minutes. Let the baked layers cool. The scraps will be needed for decorating the cake.
- 10
Step 10
We prepare the cream. Combine the chilled sour cream and powdered sugar. Mix everything.
- 11
Step 11
Pour boiling water over the prunes for 10 minutes, then cut them into pieces and spread them on a napkin. When the excess moisture disappears, add the prunes to the cream. Keep part of the cream white (without prunes) and use it to spread on the top layer.
- 12
Step 12
Assemble the cake, alternating the layers with a layer of cream.
- 13
Step 13
Spread the top layer with white cream and thoroughly coat the side parts with the remaining cream.
- 14
Step 14
Grind the chocolate trimmings from the layers and the hazelnuts into crumbs and decorate the sides of the cake as shown in the photo.
- 15
Step 15
For decoration we use prunes and chocolate. Arrange the prunes, slice them thinly, and sprinkle the cake with chocolate shavings.
- 16
Step 16
For decoration, chocolate designs are suitable, which we apply to tracing paper with a thin stream of melted chocolate and place in the freezer for 20 minutes. We will have a chocolate butterfly. To keep the butterfly's wings lifted upward, we place the parchment with the chocolate design into a half‑open notebook and send it to the freezer in this form.
- 17
Step 17
The cake will soak in 3-4 hours. Chocolate-covered prunes are ready..