In my cookbook collection there are a lot of delicious cakes. The reason is my love to baking. Literally, I love to bake cakes, cookies, tarts, puddings, muffins, etc. It gives me great pleasure when I put my handiwork on the table and my piece of art disappears in a moment dipping in a world of sweet taste and the flavors of joy and happiness. At such moments, you do not think about taking a picture, so most of my sweet recipes remain without photos. I decided to fix this and re-cook some of my favorite cakes. “Polar Bear” is one of them.

Cake “Polar Bear”

Ingredients:

Dough

• 50 g butter
• 100 g sugar (1/2 cup)
• 300 g sour cream 30%
• 1/2 tsp soda
• 1 egg
• about 3 cups flour
• 3 tsp cocoa

Sour cream

• 500 g of sour cream 30%
• 200 g sugar

Chocolate glaze

• 100 g of dark chocolate (90%)
• 100 g sugar
• 50 ml of milk
• 50 g butter

Cooking method:

1. Melt the butter, pour into a big bowl. Add the sugar and whip it to until it change the color to the white one. Pour in the sour cream, add soda and egg. To mix everything. Then add 1 cup of sifted flour and stir with a wooden spoon.
2. Divide the dough into 2 parts. In one, add cocoa and half of the remaining flour. Add the rest of the flour to another part. Put the dough on the board and knead with your hands, adding flour. When the dough becomes soft, elastic and very tender, it is ready.
3. Divide the finished dough into 6 parts and roll into balls (3 chocolate and 3 cream).
4. Preheat the oven to 190C. Line the baking sheet with parchment paper.
5. Flatten the ball with your hand and fingers stretch in different directions, giving the shape of a pancake. Put such a pancake on prepared parchment paper and roll it with a rolling pin to the desired size, then use your hands to give the edges a rounded shape. Chop the dough with a fork in several places. Repeat with all 6 pieces of dough.
6. The oven is about 6-8 minutes at a temperature of 190C.
7. While the cakes are cooling down, prepare the cream: beat the sour cream with sugar until firm foam (if you turn the bowl over, the cream will not fall).
8. Coat the cakes with cream, and put them in a stack, alternating chocolate and cream cakes. Lubricate the top and sides of the cake with the remaining cream.
9. For glaze, melt the chocolate and mix with sugar, add milk and bring to a boil, cool slightly and add butter. Keep the finished glaze during decoration on warm camphor so that it remain soft. Transfer the glaze into a pastry bag or syringe. Apply a pattern on top of the cake and cover its sides.

Important:

• When mixing the dough, depending on the density and fat content of sour cream, as well as the size of the egg, the amount of flour needed for the dough may differ from that indicated. Add so much flour to make the dough soft, elastic, but still soft.
• It is better to knead the dough for shortcakes with your hands, sometimes using a rolling pin, immediately on parchment paper to the desired size, giving a rounded shape.
• The edges of the cakes must be leveled immediately after they have been removed from the oven. Otherwise, the cake will become hard and crumble.
• Sour cream for cream should be not less than 30% fat, otherwise the cream will turn out liquid. For impregnation of cakes (optional), it is better to use less fat sour cream so that the semi-liquid cream can soak into the cakes.
• When preparing the glaze, you can use chocolate with different cocoa contents. If it contains less than 90% cocoa and a high cocoa butter content, add a little less milk (approx. 30 ml) to the icing.

It is a tea time!