Cake recipe

The recipe for the "Prague" cake was developed by Vladimir Mikhailovich Guralnik, the chief pastry chef of the "Prague" restaurant.

The "Prague" cake – ingredients:

300 grams of 15% sour cream;
200 grams of sugar;
200-300 grams of wheat flour;
butter;
2 eggs;
1 can of condensed milk;
1 teaspoon of baking soda;
cocoa

The "Prague" cake – preparation of the cakes

First, take the butter out of the refrigerator and place the pack in the container where we will make the cream. Let the block of butter sit at room temperature until it becomes soft. It's better not to put it in the microwave: it's easy to miss the moment when the butter starts to melt. Now let's proceed to prepare the dough. First, beat the eggs thoroughly with the specified amount of sugar in the recipe.

If you have a mixer, it's better to use it: you need to beat until the sugar crystals dissolve completely. After that, add the sour cream and beat everything together until smooth. Then, in the egg-sour cream mixture, add a teaspoon of baking soda.

Mix the mass again and start adding flour in portions, mixed with 4-5 teaspoons of cocoa. You can use a little less if you want the cake layer to be not too dark when cut. Start kneading the dough thoroughly, adding flour as needed. In the end, you should have a smooth, shiny dough, without lumps and similar in consistency to thick sour cream.

Prepare the baking pan. It's advisable to line it with parchment paper or grease it with butter and sprinkle with flour. When the pan is ready, pour the dough into it (the pan should be filled halfway, not more; it's better to bake another separate layer later) and place it in the preheated oven at 150-180 degrees.

After 5-10 minutes, you can slightly reduce the heat, and after 15-20 minutes, when the smell starts to waft, you can carefully check the readiness of the layer. Check in the traditional way: insert a wooden toothpick or match into the cake. If it comes out dry with no crumbs sticking to it, then everything is ready, and it's time to take the baked goods out of the oven.

Remove the pan, let it sit for a couple of minutes, and then take out the cake. Transfer it to a working surface or a wooden board and carefully, without cooling, cut it lengthwise.

While the layers are cooling, let's prepare the cream.

Cream – preparation

Here everything is quite simple; you just need to beat the butter with cocoa and condensed milk. First, use a mixer to whip the butter into a fluffy homogeneous mass.

Only then do we start to add the condensed milk in portions. The amount of condensed milk, as always, depends solely on your desire. If you want the cream to be closer in consistency to butter, stop much earlier, around a third of the can. If you want it a bit thinner and with more cream, pour in more milk.

Many who love the "Prague" cake to be as tender in texture as possible additionally soak the layers with various syrups.

The same applies to cocoa: you can omit it in the cream altogether – and it will turn out to be the so-called "striped Prague." However, I always add cocoa to the butter, never using less than 3 teaspoons. In the photo, the cream contains 4 teaspoons of cocoa and a can of condensed milk.

It's better to put the cream in the cold for about 15-20 minutes; this makes it easier to spread evenly on the layers. After this time, we do everything as usual: stack the layers on a plate, generously spreading each with cream.

The top and sides of the cake can be glazed or also coated with cream.

Decorate as your heart desires. Photos 6 - 10 show various decoration options for the Prague cake.

Now let the cake sit for a couple of hours to soak.