The Medus kūka or Honey cake cake is a multi-layered cake with honey as its main ingredient – of course. It also has a creamy filling made from sour-cream between the layers. It is a sweet and delicious treat that goes very well served with an afternoon tea. The honey cake is one of the most popular desserts in Russia as well as the sourrounding countries. In Latvia  you can find both traditional and very modern versions of the cake, which makes it even more attractive. It is one of my favorite childhood sweets and I’m happy that I finally managed to bake it.  I hope that you will enjoy my recipe!

Yield: 12 portions

Ingredients: 

Dough:

• 300ml honey
• 100g brown sugar
• 3 eggs
• ca. 600g flour – I used whole-wheat flour
• 120g butter
• 2 tea spoons baking soda
• 1 tea spoon apple vinegar

Cream 

• 700g sour cream
• 500g light philadelphia cream
• 2 table spoons honey + some sugar
• 1 tea spoon vanilla extract

You can add some more sugar to the cream if you prefer a sweeter taste. Since I had used a lot of honey and sugar in the dough, I added less in the cream itself.

Step-by-step:

• Start by preparing the dough. Mix thebutter together honey and sugar and warm the mixture up in a bain marie (water bath).

• Once the mixture is liquid and smooth, take it away from the bain-marie and mix in eggs, flour, baking soda and apple vinegar. Mix the dough well together – better use a spoon as it will be too difficult to mix it by hand.

• Pre-heat the oven to 200ºC.
• Let it cool down in the fridge for 30min and then split the dough in 6-8 equal parts. I made 7 biscuits.

• Using a floured rolling pin, roll-out each part and cut out a circle – around 25cm in diameter.
• Place on prepared baking paper. Pince the rolled-out dough with the fork to avoid  bubbles.

• Bake each part in the oven for ca. 10min. Make sure it does not burn.
• Leave the baked buiscuits to cool down and meanwhile prepare the cream filling.
• Mix together philadephia cream with sour cream, add some honey and sugar as well as vanilla extract.
• On a large serving dish, alternate 7 layers of biscuit circles and cream filling, applying the cream filling generously between layers. With the last layer, apply the cream filling and then decorate the cake with either some biscuit crumbles or some nuts.
• Leave the cake in the fridge overnight and enjoy it the next day.