For many housewives, the Napoleon cake is such a laborious dish that they deliberately deny themselves this wonderful dessert, knowing that they will not be able to cope with all the stages of preparing this delicacy. Fortunately, the modern food industry offers such people a wide range of semi-finished products, including ready-made puff pastry. Thus, the Napoleon cake recipes have become more refined, with various additives, because you don’t have to spend several hours preparing the dough - you just need to get it out of the freezer, an hour - and the baking is ready! A separate surprise will be that “Napoleon” can be prepared not only from unleavened dough, but also from yeast, as this article will discuss.
What will be needed for cooking?
To prepare a dessert according to the classic recipe for the Napoleon cake, but from the finished dough, you will need the following products:
- Frozen dough, which can be bought at any supermarket in the semi-finished department. The base, i.e. cakes, will be prepared from it.
- For the cream you will need milk, eggs and a little flour to thicken the mass. You should also stock up on vanilla for flavoring. This set is for a standard custard, which is used for cooking. You can also use other cream options for the layer of cakes: condensed milk, butter types of cream or whipped cream.
- Cake decoration should be considered: according to tradition, it is sprinkled on all sides with crumbs from the remnants of cakes, but you can always add a little originality and sprinkle the top with, say, chocolate chips or almond petals.
Also, do not forget about the inventory: a baking sheet, a rolling pin for rolling out the dough - it should be perfectly smooth, because the cakes for this cake are rolled out in a very thin layer, a blender for whipping cream and other small utensils.
Proportions
So, to prepare the cake "Napoleon" from the ready puff pastry, you need:
- Packing of frozen dough 800 - 1000 grams.
- 1 liter of fresh milk.
- Four eggs.
- Two tbsp. granulated sugar.
- Vanillin to taste.
- 4 - 5 tbsp. tablespoons of wheat flour sifted through a sieve in order to remove fine litter.
You will also need some flour to roll out the dough, as well as ice water to sprinkle the cake.
Cooking the base for the cake
First you need to unfreeze a ready-made yeast-free dough for the cake, "Napoleon" in the classic version is prepared from it. Typically, this type of dough is sold rolled up several times, so you need to remove it from the wrapper, put it on a table lightly sprinkled with flour and let it stand a little. It is important to check it periodically and, when the dough begins to soften, carefully deploy it on the table, forming an even layer. Let it lie down a little longer, and then decide how wide the cake will be, and, based on this, cut the dough into squares.
If a pack of one kg is used, then there are usually four pieces of dough, each of which must be divided into two or three parts. Roll with a rolling pin to a thickness of no more than two to three millimeters and put on a dry baking sheet. Bake in the oven until a creamy shade, avoiding tinting in a dark color (cakes will lose their attractiveness in all respects). The temperature regime of baking is 210 - 220 degrees.
Professionals advise
To make the Napoleon cake from the prepared dough (yeast-free) as airy and crispy as possible, it is recommended to sprinkle the dough abundantly with ice water before baking (for example, from a spray bottle). Due to this, during the evaporation of water during baking, the dough opens into layers more productively, forming an air structure characteristic of high-quality puff pastry.
Classic cream
When the cakes from the dough for the Napoleon cake are ready, you can begin to prepare the cream for their layer. The original recipe is a custard made on the basis of milk and eggs, it perfectly soaks the crispy cakes, making the dessert incredibly tasty. The name “custard” itself implies a certain heat treatment process in which the mass must be brewed with liquid. So it is: first you need to warm the milk, but do not bring to a boil. Then, in a separate bowl, mix sugar, flour and eggs, slightly whipping the mixture with a whisk, so that the flour does not stray into lumps that ruin the cream. Then, with a thin stream, with constant stirring, pour 1/4 portion of the warmed milk into the egg mass, achieving a uniform consistency by the continuous operation of the whisk (it is better not to use a blender for these purposes).
Then pour the remaining milk there, add vanilla and put the saucepan with the future cream on a small fire. Do not stop the stirring process so that the mass is evenly warmed up from all sides and does not stick to the bottom. You can’t boil, otherwise the eggs will curl into unattractive flakes, and the cream will be irreversibly damaged. It is only necessary to wait for the thickening of the mass, and you can turn off the stove.
Product assembly
Next, when the cakes from the finished dough for the Napoleon cake and the cream are ready, we begin to form the product: on a dish that is suitable for the baked cakes - the size, put the first layer, grease it with cream and cover it with the second cakes, slightly (!) pressing to the first fingers. Important! Flatten the future cake so much that the cream will flow out from the sides - this is not necessary. Given that the layered structure of the baked sheets of dough will most likely be a little bumpy, uneven, an inexperienced chef will want to fix this by pressing harder on the top, forming a single “pancake”. In fact, it is only necessary to press slightly, while maintaining a gap between roughnesses of 0.5 - 1 cm. The cakes will swell from the moist cream and themselves will sag to the desired shape, and the cake will retain the aesthetic appearance and lightness of taste.
Final touch
When the whole process is finished, leave the cake in a cool place for at least six hours to soak, it should be noted that from the yeast dough the cake is soaked faster than from fresh. When the dessert lasts about two to three hours, you need to use a sharp knife to cut off the edges on all sides, making them even. If pieces of dough remained during baking, then they can be crushed into small pieces and sprinkled on the sides and top of the cake.
If there is nothing left, then you can use chopped walnuts, almond petals or any other product of a similar kind. Return the cake to the cold for further soaking, and immediately before serving, cut into portions.
Modern interpretation on yeast
For those who prefer more friable and softer options, you can prepare a Napoleon cake from ready-made yeast puff pastry. Of course, this somewhat violates the traditional recipe that some zealous culinary experts call a crime, but after all, taste preferences are very personal, why not try it? The cakes for the Napoleon cake are prepared from the finished dough step by step in the same way as the unleavened dough option, but with a slight nuance: in addition to defrosting, the dough needs a little time to proof, that is, to activate the yeast.
How to do it? When the dough is rolled out and laid out on a baking sheet, let it just lie down in this form for about ten minutes and only then send it to the oven, but it does not need to be sprayed with water (this method is good only for fresh dough). All subsequent steps are identical with the previous principle of preparation, including impregnation with cream and decoration of the finished product.
Cream with condensed milk
For Napoleon cake from ready-made yeast dough (unlike the previous one), you can use more dense types of cream, based on butter or condensed milk, because the cakes from this type of dough are softer and they need less moisture to soak. To prepare it you will need:
- 1 cup of milk;
- 300 grams of boiled condensed milk;
- three eggs;
- 80 grams of granulated sugar;
- 200 grams of butter;
- 2 tsp flour;
- a pinch of vanilla for flavoring.
Such a cream is prepared according to the same brewing principle: first, milk is heated to 50 degrees, then eggs are mixed with sugar and flour in a separate container and added to milk with constant stirring. After thoroughly grinding to a uniform mass, put the cream in a saucepan on a stove with low heat and, continuing to stir, heat until thickened (it will look like thick semolina). Do not boil! Then turn off the fire and put the butter in the cream, chopped into small pieces for ease of use. Stir until the oil is completely dissolved in the cream, and then combine with condensed milk and flavor. Stir thoroughly, wait for cooling - and then you can smear the cake cakes.
Tips and Tricks from Masters
During the preparation of the Napoleon cake from the finished dough according to the recipe described above, experts recommend that you follow a few rules so that the dessert succeeds:
- The cake was originally made in the form of a triangle, symbolizing Russia's victory over the emperor, but later its shape became rectangular, which, in principle, is convenient when working with a ready-made dough.
- Do not bring the dough cakes during baking to a dark color, puff pastry categorically does not like it.
- It is better to smear the cakes with a hot or warm cream, then the soaking process will be reduced by a third. Who wants to wait for many hours when baking spreads an amazing smell in the kitchen?
- In no case should you save on cream: it should really be a lot, since the baked puff pastry sheets themselves are quite dry and brittle.
It is worth considering the power of the oven when baking, so it’s worth watching the baking time: sometimes the dough only takes 8 minutes to lighten, sometimes twice as much. No need to be afraid - this is not a biscuit dough that does not like an open door during baking - the puff reacts very well, so you should periodically look inside so as not to overcook the base for the cake.