Napoleon on chopped dough
Here is a delightful layered cake recipe that is absolutely perfect for sharing. This batch yields two small cakes, each about 16 cm wide and 10 cm tall. One is just right for a gathering of up to 8 people.
The generous portion sizes mean you can enjoy one homemade cake at home and share the other with friends or colleagues. It’s a win-win! Alternatively, this amount of dough makes a single larger cake (21 cm diameter, 10-11 cm high), which is great for a celebration with 12-15 dessert lovers.
Of course, if you only need one small cake, you can simply halve the ingredients.
Ingredients
For the Layered Dough
- 450 gr flour
- 250 gr butter 82-84%
- 200 gr sour cream
- 2 eggs
- 2 tbsp strong alcohol
- 4 gr fine salt
- powdered sugar for dusting the baked cakes
For the Cream Filling
- 750 ml milk
- vanilla
- 180 gr yolk
- 120 gr sugar
- 55 gr starch
- 95 gr white chocolate
- 75 gr butter
- lime peel
- 130 gr cream 33%
- 20 gr powdered sugar
Instructions
- To prepare the dough, start by grating well-chilled butter into the flour (I usually just use a standard box grater for this). In a separate bowl, mix the sour cream with the eggs, salt, and alcohol. Pour this liquid mixture into the flour and butter. Knead everything quickly until it forms a ball; don’t worry if it looks slightly heterogeneous or uneven—that’s actually what you want (check the photo to see the correct texture). Divide the cake dough into 16 equal pieces. It’s best to keep the pieces you aren’t currently rolling out in the fridge so they stay cold.
- To create your layers, roll out each piece of dough into a disc roughly 17 cm in diameter, dusting your work surface with a little flour as needed. Trim off any excess dough right away. Once rolled, chill the individual discs, prick them all over with a fork, and give them a light dusting of powdered sugar (see the photos for guidance).
(Note: You can collect the trimmed scraps to form one extra layer. These scraps are also perfect for baking and crushing to create crumbs for coating the outside of the finished cake.)
Bake the discs at 200 °C for about 18 minutes without convection.
During baking, the dough will shrink slightly by about 1 cm, leaving you with baked layers that are approximately 16 cm in diameter.
- For the cream filling, combine the sugar with the yolks and starch in a bowl. In a saucepan, bring the milk and vanilla to a boil. Gradually pour the hot milk over the yolk mixture in a thin stream, stirring vigorously to temper the yolks so they don’t scramble. Pour everything back into the saucepan and bring it to a boil, stirring constantly. Let it boil for one minute, then remove from heat. Add the white chocolate and butter, mixing with an immersion blender until completely smooth. Cover this pastry cream with plastic wrap directly touching the surface to prevent a skin from forming, and let it cool.
Before assembling, whip the cooled custard lightly to make it airy again. In a separate bowl, whip the heavy cream (33%) with the powdered sugar until soft peaks form. Finally, use a spatula to gently fold the whipped cream into the custard until fully combined.
