🍰 Honey cake (medovik)
Medovik is a layered honey cake: eight or more thin, crisp-baked honey sponge layers stacked with a tangy sour-cream frosting. After resting overnight the layers soak up the cream and turn soft and moist, with a caramel-honey flavour. A slice is served with tea, with the sides and top covered in fine cake crumbs.
Diets
Allergens
Contains (in a typical recipe):
What it is made of
Recipe
Ingredients
- 450 g plain flour
- 100 g honey
- 150 g sugar plus 100 g for the cream
- 2 eggs
- 60 g butter
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 700 g sour cream (20%)
Method
- Melt the butter, honey and 150 g sugar in a bowl over simmering water, stir in the soda until foamy, then beat in the eggs.
- Off the heat, mix in the flour to a soft dough and divide it into 8 pieces.
- Roll each piece very thin, cut a 24 cm circle and bake at 180 °C for 4–5 minutes. Bake the trimmings too.
- Whisk the sour cream with 100 g sugar.
- Stack the layers, spreading cream on each, cover the sides and top, and coat with crushed trimmings. Chill for at least 8 hours.
How to make it lighter
- Cut thinner slices: a 70–80 g slice satisfies the craving.
- Use 15% sour cream and sweeten the cream lightly.
- Treat it as the dessert of the day and pair it with unsweetened tea.
History
The honey cake is a favourite of Russian and Soviet home baking and is eaten across Eastern Europe. A popular story credits its creation to a cook at the court of Alexander I in the early 19th century, but there is no reliable evidence for it.
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Values are estimates per 100 g for a typical recipe; home and restaurant versions vary. Diets and allergens are worked out from the ingredients of a typical recipe — always check with whoever cooked the dish. Not medical advice. Nutrition data: Me Nutrition dish database v13. How we count →