Monastery Hut Cake: Cherry Logs with Sour Cream Frosting

Step-by-step recipe

1. For the tastiest Monastery Hut cake, you need very ripe, sweet cherries for the filling. In season that's no problem. We also have a tradition of freezing cherries and using them for pies and cherry jelly. But as it turns out, these days it's much easier to buy excellent frozen pitted cherries, very ripe and sweet. Thaw them, put them in a colander and let the juice drain.
2. How to bake the cherry logs
3. The dough for the logs is, by and large, not much different from ordinary shortcrust pastry used for tartlet shells. But it's worth making it a bit denser so it doesn't crack and soaks up the frosting better. At first, it's convenient to mix the dough with a mixer fitted with spiral dough hooks. Put the softened butter, the egg, sugar, a pinch of salt and a little vanilla, to taste, into the mixer bowl. Add the sour cream: it improves the flavor of the dough and makes it less brittle.
   
4. Mix all the ingredients thoroughly. Ideally the sugar should dissolve: there's sour cream and egg in the mix, so the sugar crystals will disappear in a few minutes. Keep mixing until the mixture looks like a pale yellow cream. If you like, you can add more vanilla, liquid is best, or a little fragrant liqueur.
   
5. Next, add the sifted wheat flour. It's best to add the flour little by little, and keep going until the dough is elastic and hardly sticky at all. Keep mixing the dough with the mixer. From here on, it's best to work on a floured table or a silicone mat.
   
6. Turn the dough out onto the table or mat. Knead it by hand, adding flour in small portions. In the end it should be firm and not sticky at all. It differs from regular shortcrust in being denser and crumbling less, thanks to the bit of sour cream in it. Roll the dough into a ball, wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 15-20 minutes.
   
7. If the cherries have pits, remove them. Once the juice has drained, squeeze the cherries lightly and taste them. If they're a bit sour, add sugar to taste: Monastery Hut is a sweet dessert, and a sour taste isn't what you want. Also add 1 tbsp cornstarch to the cherries and mix. The starch will bind the leftover juice, so the filling won't run during baking.
   
8. Take the dough out of the fridge and divide it into 15 equal pieces. Why exactly 15? The Monastery Hut is stacked as a pyramid with 5 cherry logs at the base. So that's 5, then 4, then 3, then 2, and one log on top.
   
9. Preheat the oven to 200-210°C. It should be thoroughly heated. Most likely you'll have to bake the logs in two batches. The logs usually come out 15-18 cm long, sometimes a bit longer. One baking sheet easily holds 7-8 of them. With a rolling pin, or better yet your palms, flatten a piece of dough into a rectangle about 20 cm long and 5-6 cm wide. Geometric precision doesn't matter at all. Lay the cherries on the dough in a single row, tightly packed.
   
10. Each strip of dough takes 10-12 cherries. Leave empty space at the very ends: you need it to pinch the ends of the log shut. Carefully fold the long edges of the strip together with your fingers so the cherries are completely wrapped in dough. Pinch the edges to make a closed, sealed log with the cherries inside. If a little cherry juice seeps out here and there, that's fine.
    
11. Shape the rest of the shortcrust cherry logs the same way. It's important that they're all roughly the same length and thickness. The Monastery Hut will look neat if the logs bake up the same size. That said, small imperfections will be hidden and fixed by the frosting. Place the logs on a baking sheet.
    
12. If you notice spots where cherry juice has seeped through the dough, dust them with a little flour or starch. Put the sheet with the logs into the well-heated oven and bake for up to 30 minutes. It may take more or less time: go by how done the dough is and a light golden color. As a rule, the baked logs will have traces of cherry juice on them, and that's fine.
    
13. Making the sour cream frosting
14. You can mix the frosting while the cherry logs are baking. Pour cold full-fat sour cream into the mixer bowl: 25-30% fat, the kind sold in stores, will do. If the sour cream is a bit thin and runny, thicken it. Stores sell so-called cream thickeners, sachets that contain ordinary starch and, less often, some special additives. Really, you can just add a little cornstarch. Add powdered sugar and whip the sour cream thoroughly until it looks like a thick cream. If you like, add a little vanilla or liqueur for flavor, but not much.
    
15. How to assemble the Monastery Hut cake
16. Building the hut is a creative process. You can do it on a large platter that you'll serve the dessert on. Since the logs are round and a bit irregular, stacking them very evenly is fairly tricky. Pick the five straightest ones out of the batch: they'll be the base of the cake. Spread frosting on the platter in a layer 5-6 mm thick, about the size of five logs laid side by side. Spread each log generously with frosting and lay it on the platter. Then frost the whole base well.
    
17. By and large, the Monastery Hut cake is put together the way bricks are laid in construction. Spread every baked log thoroughly and generously with sour cream frosting, then set it in its place. Frost and stack all the logs into a pyramid this way. You can nudge the logs a little to give the “building” the right shape. Be sure to fill all the gaps between them with frosting: you won't overdo it.
    
18. Frost the assembled dessert well on top, over the sloping roof. The sides, where the ends of the logs stick out, can be left as they are or frosted. It doesn't matter much, since they get trimmed off before serving. Then again, the trimmings taste just as good as the rest of the dessert. So don't skimp on the frosting. Smooth the frosting over the top with a spatula.
    
19. How to decorate the Monastery Hut cake is a matter of personal taste. My daughter and I bought a bar of dark milk chocolate and grated it. We sprinkled the chocolate shavings generously over the top of the dessert and a little on the platter. And left it at that. You can also dust it with cocoa powder, or use a combination of dark and white chocolate.
    
20. Next comes the most important step in making this sweet dessert. The cake has to soak in the fridge. Since it's made with sour cream frosting, refrigeration is a must. It needs a long time to soak. It's important that all the shortcrust logs soak up moisture from the frosting and turn soft and tender. The firm texture of baked pastry should practically disappear. The minimum soaking time is overnight, and longer is better.
21. As it soaks, the cake may settle just a little, and that's normal. But it won't lose its shape. Before serving, use a very sharp knife to trim the front edge as carefully as you can, so the cherry-filled logs are exposed. The front of the dessert will look like a honeycomb of cherries with frosting in between. Whether to trim the back as well is up to you.
    
22. The big moment has come: serve the cake at your holiday table. Since the dessert is chilled, you probably won't want it with tea. It's more of a treat that's delicious on its own, just for pleasure.