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Oh boy Melissa this cake looks divine! I can’t wait to make it!
Melissa, this looks spectacular. A couple of questions.
Looks wonderful, Melissa. Rougue de Bordeaux is about all I’m using for whole wheat flour these days, and our apple tree is dropping apples faster than we can eat them, so it’s high on my list. We first have to finish the rum cake I baked for my wife’s 75th birthday.
Richard
I have a 10 inch springform pan and a 9 inch cake pan. Which should I use? Will the cake be ruined if I flip the cake pan over to remove?
Happy Birthday yo your wife Richard. Here are some more ideas for all those apples…
Apple Crumble
Apple Pie
Apple Fritters
Apple Tart
If you made all that and I lived closer! 
It is the Jewish New Year where it’s traditional to dip apples in honey and eat it as part of the meal but if you can come up with something that had apples and honey in it that’d be a good idea.
Thanks, Abe. My 77th is coming up in a couple weeks, and I might make it then. Those are great suggestions. I’ll dip a sliced apple in honey today.
Cheers
This symbolises a sweet new year. May I wish both you and your wife a happy birthday filled with sweetness. I look forward to your bake Richard.
This cake looks delicious. Do you think I can freeze it? I need to take a cake 300 miles from me to my daughters birthday party.
@Dudleyrose Unfortunately I agree that honey in place of sugar would be problematic. The cake doesn’t have any water, so a liquid sweetener would be a big shift in hydration that you can’t correct by reducing liquid elsewhere. The batter is like a merengue so it has to be “just so.”
Soft white wheat would be lovely and I don’t think you’d need to change anything to make this substitution. It’s less absorbent than rouge de bordeaux, but I don’t think this is dramatic enough to need to remove an egg or something.
@eross You have a few options.
You could increase the recipe by multiplying each ingredient by 1.2 to fill the 10" springform. This actually works great for the eggs, increasing from 5 to 6.
(The cake is 3-D but since we’re keeping the height constant, we can just compare surface area of the pans: 64 sq inches vs 79 sq inches. Ratio to increase 79/64=1.2)
If your 9" cake pan is at least 3 inches tall, you can use it. In addition to lining the base with a parchment circle, make a two-piece sling so you can lift the cake out. Inverting the cake is probably fine, especially since you can hide stuff when you dust it with powdered sugar, but lifting it out of the pan would be safer.
Put the cross of paper Under the circle so it doesn’t cut into the cake when you lift. Also grease it before laying it in the pan to avoid tearing it.
@kitchenangel I think it would be fine to freeze. I haven’t tested it but sponge cakes and merengues tend to do well when frozen.
@evnpar Happy birthday to you and your wife 
This was really special. I did not have the special flour but used KA AP and it was delicious. Sprinkled with powdered sugar. Even better the next day after cooling in the refrigerator. Next time I may substitute a bit of almond flour to accentuate that flavor. Thanks
@Dudleyrose In a cake you can substitute sugar with honey without any problem, but only up to 15% of its weight. If you don’t like the resulting chewy texture of the cake, don’t go higher than 10%. There is another way to calculate how much honey you can use. In this case the honey cannot be more than 3% of the total weight of all the ingredients of the batter. This should result again in 10-15% of the sugar.
Honey is mostly invert sugar and as such it keeps the cake moister and fresh for a longer time than regular sugar. The drawback is that it gives a darker color to the baked cake.
Unless you are going for a strong honey flavor, depending on the recipe a mild acacia honey or a neutral invert syrup are usually used. They are perfect for Swiss rolls, as the higher moisture reduces the risk of cracks when rolling.
Beyond basic cakes, when replacing large amounts keep in mind that honey is at least 20% sweeter than sugar, so you always need to adjust the measures accordingly: 80 g honey = 100 g sugar.
I use these guidelines to refine my recipes. I hope they can also help you as a honey lover.
What about reducing water by reducing the number of eggs, then increasing the baking soda/powder to make up for the loss of leavening from the reduced eggs.
Large egg = 58 g, the shell is 8% of the weight.
Egg yoke – 50% water
Egg white – 80% water
There are lots of recipes online for Charlotte cake. On the Russian baking website I looked at (RussianFood .com), some recipes indicate 170g of flour with 1-1/2 tsp baking soda, no eggs. Traditionally, eggs are not used in Charlotte cake. No idea if baking soda was around 400 years ago when the cake was invented, no idea what they originally used for leavening.
Beautiful! I’m so glad you enjoyed it. I agree that it’s even more delicious on subsequent days, and this was a surprise since a couple of recipes said the opposite – to consume within 4 hours.
More almond flavor would be great, with almond flour and maybe increasing the amount of almond extract too.
The sharlotka was a big hit. I cut the sugar in half (as I usually do). I think next time I would only reduce it by 1/4. I didn’t bother peeling the apples and I also cut the salt in half. This one’s a keeper. Thanks Melissa. 
I’m so glad you enjoyed it. I love the tartness of Granny smith apples contrasting with the cake crumb. Maybe I’ll leave the skin next time too!
Melissa, every one of your recipes I’ve baked have been outstanding and usually become a favorite. I didn’t have a chance to bake the Sharlotka for my 77th birthday last week, as my wife baked an old fashioned pineapple upside down cake for me, a favorite from my childhood. Thanks to Breadtopia, I was able to grind fresh Rouge de Bordeaux flour. I used a variety of apples as I have a Japanese apple tree with five varieties. The apples were of different shapes and sizes which tasted great but didn’t give me a uniform pattern to work with. I was happy to have an old fashioned apple peeler.
Thanks, Melissa, you’re the best,
Richard
Wow Richard. That is a fantastic bake. It may be Russian but it does have a Viennese finesse to it. Looks delicious.
“Happy Birthday” 
Thanks, Abe. It was very easy and fun to make as well as very delicious. My wife liked it, and she normally doesn’t care for whole grain. She told me that she’s read about a French and an Italian version, as well as one that added a little bourbon. Our pears are about to go out of season but I think I might make one with pears.
Best,
Richard
Melissa, this looks so good. I’m moving towards Einkorn, so far using an Einkorn starter in my sourdough boules, as well as making crumpets with the discard. So good! Would I need to make adjustments if I substituted with 109% Einkorn wholewheat flour?
Thank you,
Elle
