Medovnik (Honey Cake)

• 450 grams Flour
• 180 grams Icing Sugar
• 180 grams Unsalted Butter
• 1 Egg
• 1 ½ teaspoons Baking Soda
• 6 tablespoons Honey
• 4 tablespoons Cream
• 1 teaspoon Cocoa Powder

Beat the butter, sugar, egg, honey and cream over a low heat (or bain marie) for about 5 minutes.  In a separate bowl mix the flour, baking soda and cocoa powder.  Then mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and let the mixture sit for about 10 minutes covered in cling film. It should be a nice soft dough consistency and you should be able to roll it out without it sticking.  If it’s too sticky then let it sit another 5-10 minutes or use a little bit of flour.
On greaseproof paper draw an 8 inch circle (or square) and roll out approximately 160 grams (one eighth) of the dough to fit the circle. It should be about 2-3 mm thick (i.e. thin!)  Roll out 8 of the circles and bake each one for 4-7 minutes at 180C.
Once they are baked, cool them on wire rack, leaving the paper on (until you come to put the cake together).  The cake layers can be baked beforehand and kept in the fridge for up to a week, or frozen for up to a month.
(If you have any dough left, bake the extra too and later grind it up with the nuts to coat the outside of the cake)

Filling and topping

• 1 Can Sweetened Condensed Milk
• 200 grams of Unsalted Butter
• 70 grams roughly chopped walnuts
• 50 ml of Rum or coffee or both
• 1 ½ Tablespoons of Sugar
• 150 ml of Water

You can first boil the can of sweetened condensed milk for 3 hours, unopened, in a pan of water. This makes it tastier, but is not essential. If you do, do this the day before, and do not open the can until several hours later when it has cooled sufficiently. 

To make the filling, blend the sweetened condensed milk with the butter until creamy.

Separately, mix the rum/coffee, sugar and water in a bowl and set aside.

Putting the cake together
Cut the edges off the 8 cake layers, so that they have a nice cleanly round shape (or square, if you used a square shape...) and don't have hard edges. The bits you've cut off can be ground into crumbs and used to spread over the cake at the end.
Put the first cake layer on a plate, and brush the rum/coffee mixture all over the top of it, then cover with the buttercream and sprinkle with a few chopped nuts.  Proceed like this, brushing both sides of the second and subsequent cake layers with the rum/coffee mixture, placing the layer on top of the last one, and spreading buttercream and nuts over it.
When you've put the last layer of cake on, cover the whole cake with the remaining buttercream and then with the cake crumbs and nuts.  Chill the whole cake in the fridge for at least 4 hours, but overnight is better - the longer you leave it, the more the cream soaks in and it becomes better. The cake can be kept in the fridge for up to a week.