I found a recipe for dietary Napoleon on an English-language website. Ugh! What ingredients! For example, gluten-free flour. What is this? Gluten is, strictly speaking, gluten. There is a very rare disease - gluten intolerance. It is rare, but a latent course of the disease is suspected in every third person.
So which flour is gluten-free? Rice flour is not the healthiest, but it is the most common. The baked goods are a bit dry. Rice bran is much healthier, but does not last long. Potato starch is gluten-free, but not very healthy. Potato flour adds flavor to any dish mashed potatoes. Tapioca flour is healthy and stores well, but where can you get it? Corn flour is both tasty and healthy. They cook a lot of it and enjoy it in the North Caucasus. Buckwheat flour very useful, but bitter. It's good to mix it with rice flour. Oatmeal It can also be gluten-free if it is made on equipment that did not grind gluten-containing grains. There is also millet flour, coconut flour, sorghum flour, nut flour, amaranth flour, chickpea flour and lentil flour. Their darkness, and darkness, and darkness. And new ones appear all the time.
Xanthan or xanthan gum also has the symbol E415. This is a natural food supplement. The most expensive, but also the best gluten substitute. It is an excellent thickener.
Number of servings: 8To prepare dietary Napoleon, you will need:
gluten free flour – 10 tbsp. (I mixed half and half rice and buckwheat flour)
baking powder – ½ tsp.
vanilla extract – 1 ½ tsp.
cocoa powder -1 tbsp.
salt – 1/8 tsp.
egg – 1 pc.
unsalted butter – 4 tbsp.
sugar – 1 tbsp.
mascarpone cheese – ¾ tbsp.
heavy cream – 2 tbsp.
xanthan – ½ tsp.
lecithin – ½ tsp.
citrus oil – 1 tbsp.
ground cardamom – ½ tsp.
Powdered sugar from unrefined cane sugar - ¼ tbsp.
powdered sugar – 1 tbsp.
dark chocolate chips – ¼ tbsp.
How to prepare dietary Napoleon.
1. Preheat the oven to 180°C.
2. Beat the egg with half a glass of sugar until light in color. Add 2 tsp. vanilla extract.
3. In another bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt and cocoa. Mix them.
4. Connect egg mixture, dry ingredients and melted butter.
5. Grease the baking sheet vegetable oil or cover with a silicone mat. Spread the dough into a thin layer.
6. Bake for 10 minutes. until golden brown. Cool slightly. Cut into equal rectangles with a sharp knife.
7. Mix the lecithin properly, citrus oil and xanthan gum.
8. Mash the mascarpone, add lecithin mixture, cardamom and vanillin. Stir well.
9. Whip the cream with powdered sugar until soft peaks form. Fold whipped cream into cheese mixture. Do not add the whole mixture at once. Stir carefully.
10. Fill a piping syringe or food bag with melted chocolate. Cut a hole in it, you will squeeze the cream through it.
11. Mix powdered sugar from unrefined cane sugar with 2 tsp. water and add a little vanilla.
12. Distribute the number of rectangles equally among each cake. Place whipped cream on bottom rectangles. Connect them to each other by pressing lightly. Apply powdered sugar and vanilla glaze to the top ones with a spatula. Now it's the turn of chocolate drawings. Pipe the chocolate and use a toothpick to help the piping bag create patterns.
I have a friend who, every time she comes to visit us, licks her lips with a sigh, looking at homemade cakes, but...diet...I want to add this recipe to my arsenal just for such cases. “According to Dukan” is the name of the diet.
I quote the author from the site www.diets. For those who really stick to a diet, I recommend reading the comments, the girls there are experienced in these things. And they give a recipe for homemade baking powder, and others useful tips. For example, someone adds the same baking powder to the dough described below. So:
«
Cake without bran!
For any day with ALTERNATING!
Additional supplements for 2 days, be careful!
Ingredients:
For the cakes:
3 eggs
2 tbsp. corn starch
sugar to taste
aromatic “Biscuit” if available or vanillin on the tip of a knife
For cream:
300 ml skim milk
3 yolks
3 tbsp. SOM (skimmed milk powder)
1 tbsp. chocolate pudding without sugar or 1 tsp. low fat cocoa
sweetener
The cake is quick and doesn’t require much effort!
Let's start with the cakes
Mix all the ingredients so that there are no lumps. Just MIX, do not beat!
Bake pancakes in a dry frying pan. This amount of dough makes 7-8 pancakes.
Now we need to dry our pancakes. We do this either in the oven or in the microwave.
I put it on the oven rack and hold it for about 5 minutes at 180 C. The result should be DRY cakes.
While the cakes are cooling, let's make the cream.
Mix all the ingredients thoroughly so that there are no lumps. Place on low heat and cook until thick, stirring constantly.
P.S. instead of chocolate pudding, you can use creamy pudding, it’s even more correct, but I liked it better with chocolate
Without letting the cream cool, we begin to assemble the cake. To do this, simply coat all the cakes and press them well together, but carefully so that the cakes do not break.
You can decorate the top with fragments of cake layers, but I don’t have any left.
Now put it in the refrigerator for a couple of hours for soaking and you can enjoy it! «
My grandmother was a very good cook, and she was especially good at baking. For the New Year, she always baked her own signature cake "Napoleon" . I remember that it contained a lot of cakes, which she baked on a large rectangular baking sheet and then generously greased them with a very tasty custard. For me, this cake is still associated with the New Year, invariably causing smile, joy, festive mood That’s why I decided to start my review of New Year’s baking with this cake.
“Napoleon” turns out to be very tasty, tender, and finger-licking! A real delicacy for those with a true sweet tooth!
Enjoy your tea!
For the test:
4 tbsp. flour
200 g plums. oils
1 egg
salt on the tip of a knife
1 tbsp. cold water
Custard:
1 liter of milk
2 eggs
6 tbsp. flour
2 cup sugar
1 tsp vanillin
*I use a 250 ml glass
Preparation:
Pour sifted flour and softened butter onto a work surface and rub well into crumbs with your hands. Separately, stir the egg in a glass of cold and slightly salted water. Pour in the liquid and knead the elastic dough.
We form a log from the dough, divide it into 8 parts (depending on the expected size) and put it in the refrigerator for half an hour. Then we roll out each part into a cake 1 mm thick, cut out circles using a plate with a diameter of 20 cm, prick them with a fork in several places and bake the cakes separately in preheated to 200-220 degrees. oven. We make a cake from the remaining dough, bake it and, using a rolling pin, make crumbs that we will use to sprinkle on the cake. When all the cakes are ready, we start preparing the cream.
Preparing the cream:
Using a whisk, mix 2 cups of milk with eggs, vanilla and flour. Combine 2 cups of milk with sugar separately and boil over low heat, stirring, then pour in the egg-milk mixture, bring everything to a boil, constantly stirring with a whisk so that no lumps form. As soon as it boils, reduce the heat and continue stirring for a few more minutes until the cream thickens.
When the cream is ready and all the cakes have cooled, we begin to assemble the cake from larger cake to smaller. We generously grease the cakes with hot or warm custard. Sprinkle the top and sides with crumbs. Let it stand for several hours at room temperature, and then put it in the refrigerator overnight. We take it out, cut it into portions, eat it, washing it down with hot tea and melting with pleasure.
Enjoy your tea!
The traditional version of the dough for Napoleon is considered to be puff pastry. You can prepare it at home or buy it at the supermarket. The first option is tastier, the second is faster. The choice is yours. In addition, some housewives cook and shortbread– in my opinion, such a cake is as far from Bonaparte as I am from genetic engineering or the hadron collider, however, it would be simply dishonest not to mention this point.
The classic version of puff pastry is a rather labor-intensive pleasure. An elastic dough is kneaded from flour, salt, butter and water, rolled into a rectangle, which is generously greased with butter. The dough is wrapped in an envelope and sent to the refrigerator, after which it is rolled out again and greased a large number oil, wrapped in an envelope, cooled, rolled out, lubricated - and so on until there is oil and strength. They say that professional chefs can make puff pastry with 500 layers!
The average housewife, I think, is not ready for such feats. And it will take a lot of time, which is why recipes were invented that do not require special skills.
So, I offer you a choice of several test options for classic recipe"Napoleon".
Preparation
Pour the flour into a bowl, rub in half the butter, and mix.
Pour water and vinegar into the well, add salt and knead the dough on the table - it should become firm and elastic.
Knead well and for a long time - this is the guarantee that the dough will not tear when rolling.
So, roll it out into a rectangle, place a second stick of butter in the center, cut in half lengthwise (to make it thinner). Cover the butter with dough (first on top and bottom, then on the sides), seal the edges well (this is important!) and quickly roll out the resulting “pie” until it is approximately three times in size. Fold it in three, roll it out again and put it in the refrigerator. We go about our business for half an hour or an hour, then we pay 10 minutes of attention to the dough - we take it out of the refrigerator, roll it out, fold it, roll it out, fold it and hide it again. You need to do this 3-4 times - in the end you will get a piece of dough, which after baking will turn into a fragrant, creamy, layered, crumbly cake.
Using a sharp knife, divide the dough in half, cut off the round edges on the other three sides of the layer (literally half a centimeter - after baking, they can be used to sprinkle the cake, so send the scraps to the oven along with the cakes), roll out additionally to the shape of the baking sheet, prick a little with a fork (or a lot: the more holes, the flatter, smoother the cake) and bake for 15-20 minutes at 220 degrees. Each sheet (layer, cake) is baked separately! It may take even less time if you roll out the dough very thin, so be careful not to overdo it!
Beer dough is the so-called false puff pastry, which is similar in technology to chopped dough. The cakes made with this dough are especially flaky, bubbly, and light. During baking, the smell of beer and alcohol “go away”, leaving only crunch and tenderness.
Ingredients:
4 cups flour;
1/2 tsp. soda;
1/2 tsp. salt;
2/3 glass of light beer;
250 g cold butter.
Preparation
Mix flour with soda and salt, grate ice cream into dry mixture butter, stir. While adding beer, quickly knead the dough into an elastic, non-stick dough.
Divide it into 8 parts, roll each into a ball, wrap in cling film and hide in the refrigerator. After half an hour, take out one at a time, roll into layers (I prefer rectangular ones, round ones are easier), bake in an oven preheated to 200 degrees for about 5-7 minutes each.
The finished dough according to this recipe turns out incredibly tender and fragile - so much so that the cake is coated with cream immediately before serving. Light crispy cakes appear on the table, melting in your mouth like a cloud.
Yes, don’t try to trim the baked layers of dough - they are so fragile that you will only crumble, turning everything into indistinct crumbs and scraps.
Ingredients:
200 g cold butter
180 ml water
1 tbsp. l. vinegar 9%
1 egg
13th century l. with a heap of flour
Preparation:
Break the egg into a glass, add water, vinegar and shake everything well with a fork.
Pour flour into a deep bowl, rub butter into the ice cream, mix and pour in the liquid component. Quickly knead a fairly elastic dough that does not stick to your hands - add a little flour if necessary.
Next comes the most interesting part: the dough should be beaten. To do this, lift the finished lump with both hands to the level of your head (or even higher) and forcefully throw it onto the table. We collect the resulting cake into a ball and throw it again - and so on at least 15 times. This procedure will make the dough smooth, pleasant and very pliable.
Divide into 8-9 parts and roll each into the thinnest rectangle possible. We immediately cut off the excess, trying to ensure that all the cakes are approximately the same size. Transfer to a baking sheet, prick with a fork and bake at 200 degrees until moderately golden brown (7-10 minutes, but the time is arbitrary and may be different for you).
By the way, the recipe is very convenient because the cakes can be stored for quite a long time - it’s a good idea to bake several portions of dough in advance, and then rejoice in the fact that you always have a “standby” version of the cake at hand.
Ingredients:
1 glass of sugar;
4 eggs;
1 tbsp. l. soda;
1 glass of honey;
5 glasses of flour.
Preparation:
Mix eggs, honey, sugar and soda, add flour and knead a thick dough. Now - the most interesting part: hide it in a plastic bag and leave it for two days (or more) at room temperature. After this, divide into equal parts (there is a lot of dough - if you make thin cakes, you will get at least 10 layers), roll out and put in the oven for 7-8 minutes (watch the dough - it should only slightly brown) at a temperature of 180 degrees.
Soft, tender cakes with slight layering. Suitable for lovers of moist custard cakes. Keep in mind that you make a lot of cakes, and they require a sufficient amount of grease, so make the cream from about 1 liter of milk - you can’t go wrong.
Ingredients:
500 g cottage cheese;
400 g sugar;
6 eggs;
700 g flour;
1/3 tsp. salt;
1/3 tsp. soda;
1/2 tsp. lemon juice.
Preparation:
Beat the eggs and sugar well, add salt, soda, lemon juice, and stir in the cottage cheese. Add flour, knead elastic dough. Divide it into 15 parts and hide it in the refrigerator. After half an hour, we take out one at a time and roll it into flat cakes. Bake at 200 degrees for about 7-8 minutes.
I recommend trimming hot cakes to get an even, beautiful cake.
After the cakes are ready, cook or whip the cream. It is believed that the classic in this case is butter cream, but I prefer custard. Choose for yourself, based on your taste and the preferences of your family.
There are a great many recipes for custard and, probably, every housewife prepares it in her own way. This diversity hides the great generosity of cooking as an art - you can, without repeating yourself, prepare new and new cakes and creams, fantasize and come up with something of your own, unusual and the best.
I offer my version of custard - found after hundreds of experiments, trials and errors. It is tasty, tender and light.
Ingredients:
1 liter of milk;
4 eggs;
1 tbsp. Sahara;
3 tbsp. l. flour;
200 g butter.
Preparation:
Mix sugar with flour, add eggs, grind into a homogeneous mass.
Pour in hot milk in a thin stream, stir well, and then put on low heat and cook until puffing, constantly stirring the cream with a spoon.
After cooling, add milk to the softened butter in very small portions (literally a spoon at a time), rub with a spoon until completely homogeneous or beat until smooth.
The most saturated option. Heavy, high-calorie, solid, but honestly, what a delicious “Napoleon” comes out with this cream! Real!
Ingredients:
250 g high quality butter;
3 eggs;
1 glass of sugar.
Preparation:
Mix the eggs with sugar and, placing the bowl over a saucepan of boiling water, beat until stiff and fluffy. The cream will look more like a viscous elastic mass than foam, however, it will clearly increase in volume.
Butter room temperature beat until smooth, add the cooled egg mixture little by little without stopping the mixer. The result is a shiny, beautiful cream that can be flavored with alcohol (literally 1-1.5 tablespoons), citrus essence, and vanilla.
Light cream with a soft curd aftertaste. Ideal if you don’t like the “emptiness” of custard, but the heaviness of creamy cream is too much for you.
Ingredients:
0.5-0.6 l of milk;
4 egg yolks;
3 tbsp. l. flour or corn (potato) starch;
1/2 cup sugar;
300 g mascarpone or any other cream cheese.
Preparation:
Mix sugar with yolks and grind until smooth.
Add flour, mix, slowly pour in milk, mix again and put the saucepan on low heat - stirring constantly, cook until thickened and starts to “puff”. When the mixture has cooled, add cream cheese and beat until smooth.
What can I say? The richest cream! For my taste, he is a little heavy and somewhat intrusive, however, I cannot help but admit that in the company of puff pastry he's perfect.
Ingredients:
250 ml milk;
150 g sugar;
2.5 tbsp. l. flour;
200 g white chocolate;
100 g butter.
Preparation:
Mix sugar with flour, add milk and bring to a boil over low heat, stirring constantly.
Remove the cream from the heat and immediately add the broken chocolate into it. Stir until the chocolate is completely dissolved and, covered with cling film, leave to cool completely.
Place room temperature butter into the cream and beat with a mixer until fluffy.
The simplest cream that is easy to prepare and delicious to eat. The pitfall is that for the cream to whip, it must be thick enough, of good quality and chilled. It is better to replace sugar with powdered sugar; it stabilizes the cream better. As a flavoring, you can add vanilla, citrus essence, a couple of drops of rum, cognac or orange liqueur.
Ingredients:
0.5 liters of heavy cream;
1 cup powdered sugar.
Whip the cream until fluffy foam. About halfway through the process, add powdered sugar a little at a time. The cream should be voluminous and stable.
Below I will tell you why “Napoleon” was named after the great commander. Looking ahead, I will only say that Bonaparte’s personal chef believed that the sides of the legendary cake should be open - and I, contrary to the theory of Henri Lagupierre, argue that “Napoleon” can be completely ennobled by hiding the uneven edges of the cakes under a layer of cream. Cover the freshly baked layers of dough with a mold (large plate) and cut them into the desired shape. Don’t give the trimmings to anyone, keep people away with a large towel - these are the crumby pieces that need to be dried, crushed with a rolling pin, and then used as a topping for the cake.
However, this is far from the only way to slightly embellish the classic look and taste of Napoleon. Most tasty option- berry layer. Between two layers of cream, or even instead of cream, apply a little currant puree, grated blueberries with sugar, strawberry jam, cranberry jam, lemon curd. The sour berry is most suitable - it skillfully neutralizes the sugar of the cream, turning the cake into an ideal composition of crispness, sweetness and sourness.
“Napoleon” looks very interesting with a layer of fruit with a rich taste. In the fall, try adding feijoa puree; in the winter, experiment with kiwi. In the spring, you can slightly boil the apple cubes and mix them with caramel sauce, and in the summer you should definitely chop apricots and add them to the cake in the form of puree or jelly.
By the way, if you want to “play” and experiment, instead of the berry layer, you can lay out a layer of jelly - it must be prepared in advance and poured into a mold whose diameter matches the diameter of the cake. It turns out fresh and very bright!
Nuts complement perfectly delicate taste“Napoleon” - believe me, a handful of roasted hazelnuts, a few almond petals, a little crushed walnuts– and the cake is transformed.
Chocolate, for my personal taste, does not fit into Napoleon, however, many people add it to the cream and dough, and sprinkle it on top in the form of crumbs. If a huge number of people do this, does that mean it’s delicious?
Another option to diversify your usual cake recipe is coat the cakes with two different creams (cream mix). By alternating custard and creamy layers, you get an incredibly rich taste.
Poppy in Napoleon It looks unexpected, but very nice. If you first lightly dry the grains in a dry frying pan, they will happily crunch on your teeth, leaving an elusive nutty taste. If you boil poppy seeds with milk and sugar, and then grind them in a blender, you will get an excellent addition to the cream, which will turn it into an excellent filling for a homemade cake.
Meringue is another way to decorate “Napoleon”, giving it unusual shades. Crispy, tender, light meringue will make a puff pastry cake more interesting, unusual and tasty. If you don’t want to waste time making meringues at home, you can easily use store-bought ones.
A separate large block can be distinguished unsweetened Napoleons— there are many options for snack cakes based on puff pastry, but this is such an array of information, ideas and recipes that I suggest we talk about it some other time.
For me, there is no greater pleasure than lighting a candle, picking up an interesting book, brewing aromatic tea, using an elegant dessert fork to cut off a small piece of layer cake and pop it into your mouth. Close your eyes with pleasure, leave the dough and cream to melt on your tongue... Take a sip of tea, slowly read a page of a fresh novel about the important and necessary, and then again - a small piece of joy, an explosion of taste, a fountain of sweetness.
There is no greater pleasure! Silence, the rain is pattering outside the window, the house is cozy and warm. There is still almost a whole “Napoleon” on the platter, next to it is a huge teapot with tea. Probably, many years ago, the great Emperor was almost as good - he was sitting in his palace, in the fireplace the fire was licking the heels of the wood, and there was a smell of calm in the air, and leisurely conversations were held. Napoleon leaned towards one of his wife's ladies-in-waiting, whispering something to her - she blushed, became embarrassed, and smiled coquettishly. However, this is where Napoleon’s pleasure, unlike mine, ends - the doors of the living room opened, and an angry Josephine appeared on the threshold, not without reason. He had to answer - without making any excuses (the best battle tactic is attack!), the emperor said the first thing that came to his mind: “Darling, I came up with an absolutely wonderful cake! Knowing how much you love sweets, I didn’t want to forget the idea, so I secretly shared it with a person you can trust!” It was simply impossible to get behind a jealous wife - so I had to describe a hastily concocted fantasy, which the retinue immediately picked up, wrote down, and the court cook implemented. Thus the Napoleon cake was born.
However, maybe real story his appearance is not like that at all. They say that the dessert was invented by Russian confectioners in 1912 to celebrate the centenary of the victory over Bonaparte. Either as a joke or seriously, the chefs decided to prepare triangular-shaped cakes - supposedly symbolizing the famous headdress of the emperor. Unfortunately, it is impossible to prove this version, because Russia does not have a patent for the Napoleon recipe, however, the theory exists, and it is absurd to simply deny its existence.
However, if you really want, you can try to convince the world that the name Napoleon cake was given by a completely different story. They say that during the war with Austria there was a crisis situation when Bonaparte’s troops were retreating, being in the area of the small Italian town of Marengo. The emperor was angry and irritated and could not restrain himself, taking out his emotions on those around him. His favorite chef fell under the hot hand - he prepared chicken, which Napoleon could not stand, although there was simply nothing else in the area... The next day brought unexpected surprises - sudden reinforcements arrived in the person of Marshal Dese and his troops, the tide of the battle changed dramatically, and Bonaparte returned to France as the winner.
On Christmas Day, the emperor called his devoted cook: “Today I will have dinner with the lady. I want you to cook that delicious chicken Marengo and something amazing for dessert – Josephine de Beauharnais loves sweets.” Frogpierre smiled, accepting the commander's roundabout apology, and went into the kitchen.
The table was served with excellent chicken in green sauce, delicious appetizers and salads, and for dessert there was a cake with many layers. The thin cake layers were carelessly smeared with cream so that the sides of the cake remained uncovered. Frowning, Napoleon demanded an explanation. Lagupierre was ready:
— History is cyclical. These layers symbolize the fact that events change each other, but the spiral of life equally sooner or later returns to the previous turn. I did not cover the sides with cream to remember this simple truth.
-Are you talking about Marengo? - asked the emperor.
Henri Lagupierre nodded his head, and the cake has since entered the world culinary art as “Napoleon”.
However, French cuisine undoubtedly has “its own” recipe for such baked goods, the origin of which should not be disputed, citing this or that story as proof. The famous mille-feuille (the name translates as “thousand petals”) is the closest relative of “Napoleon”. Puff pastry, custard – don’t you think there is a similarity?
Well, enough history, you won’t get enough of it. Let's better choose which option you will prepare for the next holiday, buy groceries and run to the kitchen - create! Sweet experiments, delicious creams and layered cakes to you!
