What is medovik (honey cake)?

Honey, and not much else that is unusual: a honey dough is rolled thin, baked as separate discs, and stacked with cream between every one. Our classic uses vanilla pastry cream.

The last step is the one people miss. The stacked cake is left to stand, and the cream works into the layers until they stop being crisp. Cut it too early and it is a stack of biscuits; cut it once it has rested and the whole thing yields to a fork. Trimmings from the layers are crumbed and pressed onto the sides, which is where that sandy-looking coat comes from.

From Eastern Europe, and that is as precise as anyone honest will be. Versions of a layered honey cake are baked across Ukraine, Russia, Poland, the Baltic states and beyond, each household certain its own is the proper one.

The name is simply the word for honey with an ending on it. In Britain you will see the same cake sold as Russian honey cake, Ukrainian honey cake or just honey cake, depending on who is selling it. We call it medovik, or honey cake, and leave the flag off.

All three are layered cakes built from thin sheets and cream, which is why they are often confused. The layers are what differ.

• Medovik has honey-baked layers, soft after resting, with a crumb coating.
• Spartak is the chocolate one: the same idea with cocoa in the layers.
• Napoleon uses flaky puff pastry rather than a honey dough, so it stays shattery where medovik goes soft.

Our three honey cakes, and what is in each, are in the table below.

Tell us the size and the date through the enquiry form on any cake page, and the price comes back within a day. Our usual notice is 7–10 days, or at least 14 for two tiers, and the table below gives it for everything else we make.

Sizes run from six to ten inches. Delivery across Berkshire starts at £30 and collection from our Bracknell studio is free. Keep the cake in its closed box in the fridge, and take it out half an hour before serving: a cold medovik tastes of much less than a cool one.