Mikado cake
Delicate, slightly crispy shortcrust layers, sweet chocolate caramel buttercream and fine dark chocolate are combined in the popular Armenian Mikado cake. With its numerous thin layers, it is a real eye-catcher on the coffee table. You can make the Mikado cake at home with this recipe.
Servings 12
Ingredients
for the dough
- 150 g sour cream
- 100 g butter room warm
- 100 g sugar
- 1 egg
- approx. 400 g flour
- 3 g baking soda
- 1 pinch of ground vanilla bean
- 1 pinch of salt
- flour for the work surface
for the cream
- 500 g caramelized sweetened condensed milk room warm
- 250 g butter room warm
- 30 g cocoa powder
for sprinkling
- approx. 20 g dark chocolate
Instructions
Preparation of the dough
- Dissolve baking soda in sour cream and set aside for now.
- Using a fork, mash softened butter, sugar, vanilla and salt in a large mixing bowl.
- Add egg and mix to a homogeneous mixture.
- Stir the sour cream and soda into the butter mixture.
- Add flour in batches and knead briefly and quickly to form a soft dough.
- Divide the dough into 10 equal pieces (in my case 79 - 80 g each) and cover and chill for 30 minutes.
- First take a piece of dough out of the fridge, roll it in flour and roll it out on a sheet of baking paper as round, very thin and almost transparent as possible. Cut a Ø 24 cm circle out of it (e.g. using a cake ring) and place it and the cut-off pieces of dough together with baking paper on a baking sheet.
- Pierce the round cake layer several times with a fork and bake it together with the scraps of dough in a preheated oven at 392 °F (200 °C) for approx. 6 minutes.
- Take the remaining pieces of dough out of the fridge one by one, roll them out into a circle and bake them individually together with the scraps of dough in the same way as the first cake layer.
- Leave the 10 cake layers and the pastry scraps to cool.
- Then finely crumble the pastry scraps.
Preparation of the cream
- Beat softened butter for approx. 5 minutes until it becomes a light and creamy mass.
- Add caramelized sweetened condensed milk in batches and beat each time to a homogeneous mixture.
- Sieve in cocoa powder and beat again briefly to form a homogeneous chocolate cream.
Preparation of the cake
- Spread the 10 cake layers with the cream, leaving a small amount for the sides of the cake, and stack them on top of each other.
- Spread the sides of the cake with the remaining cream and sprinkle with the pastry crumbs.
- Coarsely grate the dark chocolate and sprinkle over the top of the cake.
- Chill the Mikado cake for at least 8 hours.
Notes
- Instead of ground vanilla bean, you can use vanilla sugar or vanilla extract for the dough.
- The amount of flour specified may vary. Only add as much flour to the liquid mixture in portions until you have a very soft shortcrust dough.
- Do not knead the dough for too long, but only briefly until you have a homogeneous consistency. The longer you knead the dough, the stickier it will become and the more flour you will need. This could make the cake layers taste tough and not crumbly after baking.
- Do not leave the cake layers unattended in the oven. They could burn quickly.
- Handle the cake layers carefully after baking, as they are very fragile.
- The caramelized sweetened condensed milk and butter must both be at room temperature when whipping so that they can combine to form a smooth cream. If they have a large temperature difference, the cream can curdle.
- You can adjust the amount of cocoa powder for the cream to taste.
- The Mikado cake only tastes best in the next days after preparation. If possible, leave it to stand in the fridge for around 24 hours.
- Take note of the detailed tips and tricks for making the Armenian Mikado cake at the top of the article.