Medivnyk: Ukrainian Honey Cake, and Its Tall Cousin
The UAFest kitchen team
August 2026 · 7 min read
Korovai, the ceremonial loaf, at a festival gathering
Medivnyk is a honey cake: dark, spiced, faintly bitter from burnt honey, and better on the third day than on the first. It belongs to Christmas and to funerals and to any afternoon when someone puts the kettle on.
It is regularly confused with medovik, the tall cake of many thin layers stacked with sour cream. Both are honey cakes and they are not the same thing.
Medivnyk and medovik
Medivnyk is a single baked loaf or a simple two-layer cake — honey, spice, sometimes rye flour, sometimes walnuts and raisins. It is home baking, and it keeps.
Medovik is the café version: eight to twelve wafer-thin honey layers rolled out one at a time, baked in minutes each, then stacked with a sour cream or condensed-milk frosting and left overnight for the layers to soften into something like a dense cake.
- Medivnyk: one bake, spiced, dark, keeps a week.
- Medovik: many thin layers, cream between, must rest 12 hours before cutting.
Cooking the honey first
Heating the honey until it darkens and smells of caramel is what separates a good medivnyk from a sweet brown loaf. Warm it gently until it foams and turns a shade darker, then take it off the heat before it burns properly.
Baking soda goes in while the honey is still hot. It reacts on contact, foams up in the pan, and gives the cake its open crumb.
Why it improves with age
Honey holds water. A medivnyk wrapped in paper and left in a tin turns softer and darker over three or four days, and the spice settles from sharp to round. Bake it on Thursday for a Sunday table.
Recipe
Medivnyk (Ukrainian Honey Cake)
A dark spiced honey loaf that keeps for a week and improves for three days.
- Prep
- 25 minutes
- Cook
- 45 minutes
- Total
- 1 hour 30 minutes
- Makes
- One 24 cm loaf, 12 slices
Ingredients
Cake
- 250 g honey
- 150 g butter
- 150 g sugar
- 3 eggs
- 350 g all-purpose flour
- 50 g rye flour (optional, for depth)
- 1½ tsp baking soda
- 2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp ground ginger
- ½ tsp ground cloves
- ½ tsp ground nutmeg
- 150 ml strong black tea or milk
- 100 g walnuts, chopped (optional)
- 80 g raisins (optional)
Method
- 1Darken the honeyWarm the honey in a wide pan over low heat until it foams and turns a shade darker and smells of caramel, about 5 minutes. Take it off the heat.
- 2Add the sodaWhisk the baking soda into the hot honey. It will foam up dramatically; keep whisking until the foam settles, then stir in the butter until melted and let it cool to warm.
- 3Build the batterBeat the sugar and eggs until pale, then fold in the honey mixture. Sift in both flours and the spices, alternating with the tea, and fold until just smooth. Stir through the walnuts and raisins.
- 4BakePour into a lined 24 cm loaf tin and bake at 170 °C for 45 to 55 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean. Cover the top with foil if it darkens early.
- 5Keep itCool completely in the tin. Wrap in baking paper and leave in a tin for at least a day before cutting; three days is better.
Notes from the kitchen
- Buckwheat honey gives the darkest, most bitter-edged cake; acacia honey gives a mild one.
- For a two-layer version, split the cooled loaf and fill it with sour cream whipped with a little sugar.
- The batter takes cocoa well — a tablespoon deepens the colour without tasting of chocolate.
Home baking, honey and preserves are sold by Ukrainian makers at the festival market.
Sunday, September 13, 2026 · 12 PM – 6 PM · Riverside Park, Carleton Place
What people ask
Medivnyk is a single spiced honey loaf baked in one go. Medovik is a tall cake of many thin honey layers stacked with sour cream frosting and rested overnight.
The soda reacts with the acid in the honey immediately, foaming the mixture and giving the finished cake its open, springy crumb.
Wrapped in paper in a tin, a week easily. It is at its best on days two to four, when the crumb has softened and the spice has rounded out.
At Christmas above all, and at memorial meals; beyond that it is ordinary afternoon cake with tea.
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