Napoleon.

Napoleon.

I have been preparing this recipe for 17 years and it has firmly taken the place of the most beloved cake in our family. Moist and very tender, this cake fully justifies the trouble of preparation.
For the layers, only 3 ingredients are needed
Butter - 450g
Flour - 4 cups
Cold water - 250g

Necessary tools - a large board, a large chef's knife or such a chopper

This dough is called "chopped" because it needs to be chopped with a knife until it reaches the state of dry crumbs, rather only the flour and butter, water is added a little later.

When the flour and butter look approximately like this, you can add the water.

Combine the water and crumbs together and after that chop a little more so that the water is evenly distributed. After that, you can start kneading it with your hands, the butter will soften a bit from the heat of your hands and the dough will begin to gather into a ball.

Now it needs to be divided into approximately equal parts, I ended up with 14 parts

Roll each into a ball, here is what size it should be

Place all the balls in zip bags and put them in the refrigerator. It's time to prepare the cream.

CREAM
For the cream, you will need 5 eggs, 1 liter of milk, 1/3 cup of flour, 2 cups of sugar, 1/2 tablespoon of vanilla

In a blender, add eggs, sugar, vanilla, flour, and about a cup of milk. Pour the rest of the milk into a saucepan and place it over medium heat.
A few words about vanilla. You can use extract, but I don't like it because of the alcohol in it, which makes the aroma sharp. I recently discovered vanilla paste for myself - it's whole vanilla seeds in sugar syrup - a very pleasant product

When the milk is almost boiling, introduce the mix of eggs, sugar, flour, and milk and stir well, continue to keep it on the heat and stir until the cream boils and thickens. Stir along the bottom of the saucepan so that the cream does not burn. Its final consistency should be like this

NOTE: I used a double portion of cream for this amount of dough, so either halve the dough or prepare twice as much cream at once
Now you can leave all this in the refrigerator overnight or immediately proceed to baking the layers. For this, take each piece of dough and flatten it

After which you start rolling it on a well-floured board in all directions to get a relatively round layer. I roll the dough very thinly, but you can save effort and roll it twice as thick, then you will need to initially divide the dough into larger pieces and give the cake time to soak, at least 12 hours.
I usually cut the dough according to the plate on which I will serve the cake, this time I cut according to the markings on the board, and the diameter of each layer turned out to be about 25 cm. Do not crumple the trimmings, but carefully place them on a separate sheet of parchment in one layer - they will be used for sprinkling the cake.
Now the layer needs to be carefully transferred to a sheet of parchment. For this, I place a rolling pin in the center of the layer and carefully wrap it around the rolling pin

The layers need to be baked at 180 degrees for about 5 minutes for each layer. I always bake 2 layers at a time. Determine readiness by color. If the layer is even slightly burnt - throw it away, otherwise it will ruin the entire cake. You can pierce the layers with a fork to prevent bubbling, but I don't do that as it doesn't bother me. The trimmings go into the oven last. Then I place them in a zip bag and roll them with a rolling pin until they turn into crumbs.

The layers can be immediately stacked on a plate from the oven and coated with cream as they are ready, I didn't do that this time, but I recommend it - it's easier.
When you assemble the cake, each layer needs to be slightly pressed down so that it crumbles and lies well on the previous layer of cream.

When all the layers are stacked, the cake needs to be sprinkled with crumbs on all sides.

 I highly recommend making it a day in advance, as it tastes better from the refrigerator.