Vegan Napoleon Cake – Soviet Retro

Napoleon cake was extremely popular in the USSR and was (and still is) a classic celebration cake in my family. It's a type of mille-feuille and in this recipe I have veganised my traditional family recipe. You can use different fillings and my cousin, for example, prefers to use crème pâtissière rather than this richer but simpler version.

This is not a fast cake, and takes a few hours to make, but it is best made 24-48 hours in adavnce, which makes it a great 'prepare ahead' party cake

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Prep Time 2

Cook Time 1 30

Assembly 1

Total Time 4 30

Servings: 10 slices

Course: Dessert

Ingredients Equipment Method Notes

Ingredients

Pastry layers

420 g plain flour
300 g vegan butter – straight out of the fridge, do not warm to room temperature (I use flora plant butter)
75 g water
1 and 1/2 tbsp distilled vinegar

Filling

300 g vegan plant butter
600 g vegan condensed milk (I always use biona condensed coconut milk, others I have tried have not tasted as good)
1 tsp vanilla essence

Equipment

2-3 baking trays
1 electric whisk
1 Plate/ bottom of cake tin 21-23 cm

Method

Making the pastry

Take the plant butter out of the fridge and put it on a big chopping board
Pour all the flour over the block of plant butter and start cutting it with a large knife
Continue cutting through the mixture, intially you will get large clumps of butter covered with flour, but as you continue cutting it the clumps will get smaller. Make sure you gather the flour that falls around the edges back into the middle and cut it into the plant butter
When the mixture starts to resemble coarse crumbs and becomes more uniform, create a little well in the middle of the mixture
Mix the water and the distilled vinegar and pour a small aount into the well
Continue chopping, mixing the water into the pastry and adding it slowly
Once all the water is added, the mixture will be starting to come together. Using your hands roll it into a sausage shape and cut it into 8 pieces. Roll up each piece into a small ball and put them all on a plate. Cover with cling film and chill in the fridge for at least an hour

Making each layer

Heat the oven up to about 220°C and out it on a fan setting, though a non-fan oven works fine too
Make sure there is plenty of flour on the surface of where you are rolling these out. I usually work with one ball of dough at a time, leaving the rest in the fridge
Take a ball of dough and roll it out. It should be like a piece of thick paper
Use the cake tin bottom/plate to cut out a round shape, keep the off cuts and roll them into a ball
Put it on a sheet lined with baking paper – you don't need to grease it as there is lots of fat in the pastry
Prick the pastry circle all over with a fork – this helps the air escape, otherwise you end up with lots of bubbles and an uneven layer
Bake the layer for around 5 minutes – keep checking on it as it can burn quickly, you're aiming for a light beige cookie kind of colour. You can bake 2 or 3 layers simultaneously
While those layers are baking, roll out some more for the next round
Once the layers are baked, transfer them to cool onto a rack or a flat plate. If a layer breaks in half while you're transferring it, don't worry, keep the halves togetehr and use it in the middle of the cake, no-one will notice!
When you have used the balls up, start using the off cuts to roll out further layers, the more you get the better
When you're getting towards the end of your pastry, do one big last layer without cutting it out. You'll crumble this up and use it for decorating

Making the cream

Whisk the cream ingredients until they form a smooth uniform paste

Assembling the cake

Take one of the baked layers and spread some of the cream on it. The thickness should be similar to when you're spreading butter and jam ona piece of bread
Put another layer on top of it and continue spreading cream onto each layer you add. Do your best to keep the layers nicely aligned atop of each other
Sometimes if bubbles have formed on the layers you do have to press down on them. This may cause the layer to break, but don't worry and just keep going

Decorating the cake

When you have put the last round layer on, use the rest of the cream to cover the top and the sides and even it out as much as you can
Break up the big irregular layer that you baked last into crumbs, you can usually do this with your hands as the pastry is very brittle
Spread the crumbs evenly over the top and on the sides covering the whole cake
Put the cake in an airtight container and put in the fridge overnight, or even for a couple of nights. This will help the pastry layers soak up the cream creating that perfect Napoleon texture! You can serve it straight away, but it really is not as good

Notes

Troubleshooting:

The pastry is too sticky and won’t roll out without tearing – coat it in flour as you roll. Also any holes can just be repaired with a patch – each individual layer doesn’t have to be perfect