Chocolate Spartak cake
Fluffy chocolate cake layers with honey flavor, delicate pudding butter cream and sweet chocolate glaze make up the unique taste of the Spartak cake. It tastes so heavenly tender that each piece of it practically melts in your mouth. It is not without reason that it is one of the most popular Russian cakes. With this recipe you can make the chocolate Spartak cake at home.
Servings 12
Ingredients
for the dough
- 130 g honey**
- 100 g butter
- 120 g sugar**
- 2 eggs
- 35 g cocoa powder**
- approx. 470 g flour**
- 6 g baking soda** (sodium bicarbonate)
- 1 pinch of salt
- flour for rolling
for the cream
- 250 g butter room warm
- 650 ml milk
- 2 eggs
- 150 g sugar**
- 40 g cornstarch**
- 1 pinch of vanilla bean**
for the chocolate glaze
- 100 g dark chocolate
- 60 g butter
Instructions
Preparation of the dough
- Put honey, eggs, sugar and salt in a thick-bottomed saucepan and mix thoroughly.
- Add butter cut into pieces and baking soda and heat (do not boil!) the honey mix slowly in a water bath, stirring, until the butter and sugar have dissolved and the mix has become a lighter color. (It took about 5 minutes for me).
- Take the honey mix off the heat and let it cool to lukewarm.
- Mix about 420 g of flour with cocoa powder, add it to the honey mix and knead it into a soft chocolate dough, adding the remaining flour in portions as needed if the dough is sticky.
- Divide the dough into 10 equal pieces.
- First roll one piece of dough in flour, roll it out thinly on a sheet of baking paper and cut out an approx. Ø 24 cm round cake layer from it. Put the dough scraps aside for the time being.
- Pull the baking paper with the cake layer onto a baking tray, pierce the cake layer several times with a fork and bake it in a preheated oven at 356 °F (180 °C) for about 5 minutes.
- Roll out the remaining 9 pieces of dough, cut out round cake layers and bake them in the same way one after the other. Let all 10 cake layers cool down.
- Also roll out the leftover dough thinly, bake it, let it cool and crumble it finely.
Preparation of the cream
- Thoroughly mix eggs, sugar and cornstarch in a thick-bottomed saucepan until a homogeneous mass without lumps.
- Pour in milk and mix again.
- Place the saucepan on the stove and bring to a boil, stirring constantly. The mixture will thicken like a pudding.
- Cook the pudding, stirring constantly, for 2-3 minutes, remove it from the heat and let it cool to room temperature.
- Beat softened butter and vanilla for about 5 minutes until light and fluffy and creamy.
- Add the pudding to the butter in batches, whisking briefly each time to form a homogeneous cream.
Preparation of the cake
- Spread 9 cake layers evenly with the cream, leaving a small amount of cream for the sides of the cake, and stack them on top of each other.
- Place the last cake layer without cream on top.
- Spread the sides of the cake with the remaining cream and sprinkle with the crumbs (from the leftover dough).
Preparation of the chocolate glaze
- Melt dark chocolate together with butter slowly, so that a liquid smooth glaze is formed.
- Pour the chocolate glaze over the top of the cake and spread it evenly with a spreading knife.
- Refrigerate the chocolate Spartak cake for at least 5 hours or preferably overnight.
Notes
- Use a good quality aromatic honey for the dough.
- The specified amount of flour may vary. It is better to mix a smaller portion of flour with cocoa powder first and add the rest of the flour as needed during kneading.
- Do not knead the dough too long, but only until it has a homogeneous consistency.
- If you have too much leftover dough, you can still roll out a cake layer from it and use the leftover dough to make the crumbs.
- Instead of vanilla bean, you can use vanilla sugar or vanilla extract for the cream.
- Note the detailed tips and tricks for making the chocolate Spartak cake at the top of the post.