Honey cake with prunes and soured cream

There are many variations of the honey cake with the soured cream in Russia, I have tried many, and this one is my favourite. I have played with different flavours, substituting soured cream with the whipped cream and butter cream, but realised that the soured cream is the must. It truly enhances the sweetness of the honey and prunes. You will need a good quality soured cream, closer to creme fraiche, as it has to be thick, not runny, otherwise it won't work.

You will need:
100g unsalted butter
80g honey (runny variety but preferably a good quality one not the syrupy substance that often comes as honey in the supermarkets)
400g plain flour
2 medium eggs
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 Earl Grey teabag
1 tin of prunes in syrup
200g prunes, pitted
200g caster sugar
300ml soured cream (thick)

Place the butter and honey in a mixing bowl, cream thoroughly, beat in the eggs, add the flour and baking powder, mix together to form the dough. Cover the bowl with a clean teatowel and put in the fridge for 2 hours.
Once taken out of the fridge, leave it for about 30 mins at the room temperature, before dividing the dough into 5-6 balls. Roll each ball on a lightly floured surface to about 3-5 mm thickness. Cut them into large circles, using a plate or a bowl. The variation of this recipe was published in the DK Everyday Easy Cakes & Cupcakes, they didn't make any acknowledgement but this is my recipe, and I blogged about it some time ago. They mentioned using a 14 cm bowl for this purpose. I use a wider plate, hence I have 5 layers, and they have 6. It is entirely up to you, if you want it wider or higher.
Bake 2 layers at a time on 2 trays at about 180C for 8-10 minutes, or until golden.
Here is a stack of honey cake layers without added cream

Make a mug of Earl Grey as usual, and leave it in the mug for 3 minutes, then discard the teabag. Add the pitted prunes and half the sugar. Bring to boil and remove from the heat. Let it cool.
Open the tin with the prunes, remove the stones from the prunes and keep the juice. Remove the pitted prunes from tea and set aside. Add the prune juice to the tea.
Brush each honey cake layer with the prune & tea mixture.
Add the remaining sugar to the soured cream and beat it together. Add a couple of spoons of the soured cream on top of the honey cake layer, spread it evenly. Place the mixed prunes on top (both pitted prunes that were removed from the tea and the prunes from the tin). Put the next honey cake layer, repeat the process until all the soured cream and prunes are used.

Now that your cake is assembled, you might want to add the syrup. To make the syrup boil the mixture of tea and prune syrup until much reduced, leave it to cool, then spoon over the cake.

Don't be tempted to eat it immediately, it needs a few hours for flavours to come together. It is best served the next day. It will keep in the fridge for up to 3 days.

This cake is quite time-consuming to prepare, but it is worth it. This is probably one of my most favourite cakes.

The recipe is sent to "Flavours of Russia" Event

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