When you are assured that the famous Prague cakeeasy to bake at home, you are not being deceived. It is really simple. But will the result be the same cake that was served in the Prague restaurant, and then became an acutely shortage product of Soviet confectionery factories? Most likely, no. In the home version, you can easily get Prague cake, Old Prague, Chiffon Prague, but it is quite difficult to bake the classic Prague cake at home. The main snag is the molasses that is added to the chocolate fondant for this cake. In addition, the original recipe for the Prague cake includes the French liqueur Benedictine (a monastic drink based on a large number of herbs and honey), which you also have to look for in our stores. As many as four types of cream! Can you handle that? True, Prague contained four creams only at the very beginning of its existence, and then it began to be prepared with only one cream. And besides, the layers of butter sponge cake, prepared using a special technology, in classic Prague were soaked in rum (also later removed from the recipe) and coated with apricot marmalade. Have you not yet given up on your intention to bake a classic Prague cake yourself? Then we offer you a recipe for this cake according to GOST (or almost according to GOST). In any case, we tried to adapt this recipe to modern realities as much as possible.
Sponge cake for Prague cake
The quantity of products corresponds to the GOST standardrecipe. How you manage to weigh, for example, 151 grams of sugar is your concern (hint: use electronic scales). But you wanted a classic Prague cake recipe, and in this case the classic looks exactly like this. Ingredients:
- Wheat flour (high grade) - 116 g;
- Butter (butter, not spread and margarine) - 38 g;
- Sugar - 151 g;
- Powder of cocoa (ideally - "Golden label") - 23 g;
- Egg of chicken - 335 g (hint: average weight of eggs without shell - 45 g);
From this amount of products you should haveyou will get a half-kilogram sponge cake (according to GOST - 472 g). Preparation: Separate the whites from the yolks, divide the sugar into two equal parts, mix the flour with cocoa powder and sift, let the butter melt a little (become soft). Next, beat the yolks with one part of the sugar. Beat for a long time and thoroughly until all the sugar crystals dissolve, and the yolk mass becomes fluffy and light. Then beat the egg whites until a clear mark from the whisk or mixer blades appears on them. Next, in two steps, add the remaining sugar to the whites and continue to beat until the sugar is completely dissolved. Now both beaten masses need to be mixed: carefully add the whites to the yolks. First, add a third of the whites, mix, add the rest and mix again. After this, add butter heated to 30 degrees and flour with cocoa powder to the egg mixture. Do all this carefully and even gently, but quickly so that the whites do not settle from our efforts. Next, pour the dough into a round form covered with baking paper (bottom) and bake in a preheated oven at a temperature of 200-220 degrees. It will take from half an hour to forty-five minutes for the biscuit to be completely ready. First, cool the finished biscuit directly in the form for twenty minutes, then take it out and leave it to stand for eight hours. Only from the stood biscuit do we remove the paper and clean it with a knife (scrape off the top glossy crust). According to GOST, you should get a round biscuit semi-finished product with a brown porous but elastic crumb.
Prague cream
The classic Prague cake contains butterchocolate cream, which should look (according to GOST) like a fluffy brown mass (of uniform consistency, with a glossy shine and holding its shape well). By the way, the recipe for making this cream differs from the well-known butter cream with condensed milk, and it itself received the name "Prague" corresponding to the cake. Ingredients:
- Butter - 199 g;
- Powder of cocoa - 9,3 g;
- Egg yolks - 21 g;
- Condensed milk (whole with sugar) - 120 g;
- Water - 21 g;
- Vanillin - 0.1 g.
Preparation:Mix the yolk with water (in equal quantities), add condensed milk to them and put in a water bath. If you do not know how to organize a "bath" for cream, then it is done in the following way. Water is poured into a larger bowl, and a smaller bowl with cream is placed in this water. When the water boils, it also heats what is in the small bowl: you get a water bath. So, boil the cream to the consistency of sour cream, and then cool it. After this, lightly beat the butter and gradually (in several stages) add the cooled custard mass to it. At the very end of whipping, add cocoa powder to the cream. The entire whipping process will take you about twenty minutes, and as a result you will get 359 grams (according to GOST) of Prague cream.
Chocolate Lipstick
Perhaps the most difficult stage of making the classic Prague cake. But the original recipe involves using exactly this chocolate fondant. Ingredients:
- Sugar - 91 g;
- Water - 30 g;
- Starch syrup - 14 g
- Powder of cocoa - 6 g;
- Vanilla powder - 0.3 g;
- Essence of fruit - 0.3 g.
From this amount of products you should haveyou will get 116 grams of lipstick. But since such a small amount of lipstick is difficult to whip, you can take double the amount specified in the recipe. So, mix sugar with water and heat the syrup to a temperature of one hundred and eight degrees. In a separate saucepan, heat molasses to fifty degrees and add it to the syrup. Next, boil the syrup over medium heat to one hundred and fifteen degrees and add the essence to it. After that, cool the syrup to forty degrees and whip it with a wooden spatula or in a whipping machine for twenty minutes. Add cocoa and vanillin to the lipstick just before applying it to the cake. Note: The classic recipe is replete with instructions on the exact temperature of the products during the preparation of the lipstick. For convenience, use a culinary thermometer.
Cooking Cake
The GOST recipe is, of course, complicated for home cooking of the Prague cake. But if you have succeeded, then all that remains is to assemble and decorate the cake correctly. Ingredients:
- Biscuit semi-finished product;
- Prague cream;
- Chocolate lipstick;
- Apricot marmalade (jam or confiture)
Preparation:First, we cut the biscuit semi-finished product into three layers. Spread the first (bottom) and second (middle) layers with cream. We will use almost all the prepared cream for the layer, and a couple of tablespoons can be left for decoration. Spread the top layer and the sides of the cake with thick apricot jam (marmalade, confiture). And pour over chocolate fondant heated to fifty degrees. If desired, decorate with the remaining cream and chocolate shavings. This is the classic recipe for the Prague cake. The legend of Soviet cuisine continues to live both in the classic version and in home kitchens, where almost every housewife tries to try out another recipe for this famous cake. Perhaps you will be able to revive the culinary classics, using the GOST cake recipe. Go for it! And cook with pleasure. Postscript: The source of this article was the handwritten notes of a Soviet culinary school student, dated back to the 1980s. We recommend reading:
