Monastery Hut / Cusma Lui Guguta Traditional Ukrainian / Moldavian Cake

I want to share with you a recipe for a cake that everyone in my family loves very much. This cake has a pyramid shape, with so-called pastry "tubes" that have sour cherry (tart cherry) filling and sweet cream outside. Sweet cream and the sour cherry filling inside tender tubes make this cake very tasty. This cake looks impressive, is very delicious, simple, easy to assemble and can be made ahead.

There are a lot of names for this cake. In the national Ukrainian cuisine, this cake has the name "Monastyrska hata" or "Monastyrska Izba" or Monastic Hut Cake. The pyramid shape of this cake truly resembles a traditional log house. In the national Moldavian cuisine, this cake has the name "Cusma lui Guguta" or Guguta's hat, since when sliced, this cake does indeed resemble a traditional shepherd's Astrakhan cap of lambswool worn by a little boy Guguta from children's tale by Moldovan author Spiridon Vangeli.

There are many variations of this cake. In some recipes, tubes are made from pancakes. I am sharing my recipe. I also figured out how to make the tubes easier to avoid transferring from the table to the baking paper, as the tubes can be easily damaged.

For the Dough:
0.88 lb (400 g) flour,
7 oz (200 g) butter,
0.85 cups (200 ml) sour cream,
1 Tbsp vanilla sugar,
2 tsp baking powder.

For the Cream:
2.96 cups (700 ml) sour cream,
0.66 lb (300 g) powdered sugar.

A piece of dark chocolate for decoration.

For the Cherry filling:
2.2 lb (1 kg) sour / tart cherries or frozen tart cherries,
0.33-0.44 lb (150-200 g) sugar.

You need a rectangular, flat dish, but if you don't have one, you can wrap a cutting board in foil.

Wash and pit the cherries. I had two varieties of cherries, so I decided to mix them.
If you use frozen cherries, thaw them at room temperature.

Cover the cherries with sugar and leave for 20 minutes.
Bring the cherries in their own juice to a boil, leave to boil 2-3 min.
Then strain the cooked cherries and leave to cool.

In some recipes, pitted cherries are not cooked, but left for 30-40 minutes, then the juice is drained. But in this case, very often a lot of juice is released when baking tubes, then it is very difficult to assemble the cake.
In some recipes, water and starch are added to the pitted cherries and it is boiled for 5 minutes, but I do not like this. I find that cherries release enough juice and water is not needed, cherries do not need to be boiled for so long, the starch changes the taste a little.

Mix the flour with baking powder, then add the softened butter, the cream, the vanilla sugar and knead thoroughly. You need to knead the dough quickly, otherwise the butter will melt and the dough will be sticky and you will want to add more flour, but then the baked tubes in the cake will not be so tender. The dough should not stick to your hands.

Put the dough in a plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator for 20 minutes.

If you use sour cream, put it on a piece of cheesecloth and then in a colander to take out the excess liquid. Leave in the refrigerator for 30-60 minutes. This will thicken the sour cream even more.
Add powdered sugar and whisk the cream to achieve a thick texture. It should not be hot in the kitchen.

Cover the cream and place in the refrigerator.

Divide the dough into 3 pieces, then divide each piece into 5 more balls. In total, you should get 15 balls of dough.

Place the dough balls in plastic wrap and then in the refrigerator.

Cut a piece of baking paper to the size of the baking sheet.

Roll out the dough strips on baking paper (4 strips on one baking sheet). The length of the strips should be slightly less than the size of your dish (or of your cutting board if you use it instead of a dish), but not longer than the baking sheet. It is better not to add flour when rolling. You can do this with your fingers, but it's better to work with gloves to prevent the butter from melting so quickly.

Turn on the oven at 360 degrees F (180°C).

Place the cherries in a row in the middle of the strip (see photo).
Сonnect the edges of the strip to form a tube, seal it (at the ends too).
Turn the tube with the joint down (roll), leave about 1 inch between the tubes.

Form tubes from other 3 strips on one baking sheet in the same way.

When you finish making the tubes from all 4 strips, you will have room on the baking sheet for another tube. Add/make another strip and form a tube out of it. In total, you will get 5 tubes on one baking paper / sheet.

Transfer the baking paper with the tubes to the baking sheet and bake the tubes for 10 minutes in a preheated 360 degrees F (180°C) oven until golden.

Cool the tubes on a flat surface. Be careful when removing the tubes as they are fragile.

Make and bake two more baking sheets of 5 tubules per each (repeat steps 7 and 8). You should have 15 baked tubes in total.

Place 5 tubes as the first layer, smear the tubes with cream.
Then place 4 tubes on top as the second layer, and smear again with cream.
Then 3 tubes as the third layer, 2 tubes as the fourth layer, and 1 tube as the top layer, smearing each layer with cream.

Grate the dark chocolate and sprinkle the cake on top.

Let the cake sit for 10-12 hours in the refrigerator (better overnight).

Make a cup of strong Americano coffee and enjoy a generous piece of your Monastery Hut cake.