Gorka- Little Hill cake Recipe or Monastyrskay Izba cake

This cake has couple different names that I know. Some call it “Monastyrskaya Izba”(“convent house”)-“Монастырская изба”. It’s also called “Gorka” which means little hill. No matter how you’ll call it, it’s very different and delicious cake.

“Gorka” is traditional Russian cake build as a pyramid of pasty tubes filled with Morello sour cherries – all covered in a sweetened sour cream filling. That’s the traditional way of making “Gorka”. I twisted the original recipe a little. I used buttery creamy Dulche de Leche filling.
The cake turned out amazingly good!!!

Serves: 10-12
Ingredients:

1 cup Sour Cream- cold
2 sticks butter- cold, cut into cubes
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda

Filling:
2 cans Dulche de Leche (cooked condensed milk)
3/4 Condensed milk
2 sticks butter –unsalted
1Tbsp. vanilla extract

2 12oz. Jars of Morello pitted cherry in syrup.
Dark chocolate for decoration

Direction:
Place flour mixed with baking soda into the food processor bowl with the plastic blade attached. Add the butter (very cold), sugar and salt. Pulse couple times to lightly mix the ingredients. Add sour cream and pulse couple more time or just enough so the dough comes together and doesn’t crumble. Don’t process it too much.

***If mixing the dough by hand, combine flour with baking soda add cubed butter in a bowl. Cut in the butter using a pastry blender or two knives in a crisscross motion.

Split dough and form/shape into 15-18 oval disks that are no more than half inch thick. Place them on flat plate, cover with plastic and refrigerate for 30-40 minutes.
Strain the cherries from the syrup. We want the cherries to be as dry as possible so that your dough doesn’t get soggy.

Preheat oven to 400F.
To roll the dough, I used my Pasta Maker Machine from Kitchen Aid. A pasta maker is a great tool to have, and not just for making pasta. I use it to roll out any dough.

When I come across a recipe that includes a semi-firm dough and it needs thin, consistent rolling, I turn to my pasta maker. I am not big fan of rolling out dough with a rolling pin, especially if it needs to be thin and consistent. My pasta roller solves this problem for me, and in much shorter time.
Set the pasta machine to the widest setting (on Kitchen Aid Pasta Maker I set on #1.) Dust the dough very lightly with flour and feed through with one hand and holding the other end with the other hand.

Line up the rolled dough. We need to have 3-31/2” wide strips. If the rolled dough is wider just trim it so you’ll have the size we need. (combine all the trimmed extra dough and refrigerate covered with plastic, we will roll it out at the end). The length of the dough should be at least the length of your serving dish; I made mine about 12” long.

*** Rolling with Pasta Maker is an option; you defiantly can roll with your rolling pin. Same idea, same size.

Line up cherries in single file.

Pull both sides of the dough and pinch so the dough will stick; don’t forget to pinch the ends too.

Place pastry “tubes,” gently on baking sheet – seam side up. (Leave a bit of space in between each tube). Repeat with remaining dough and cherries. Bake for 23-25 minutes, until golden brown. Let them to cool at room temperature.

If your tubes aren’t exactly the same length, no worries – you can customize them when assembling the cake.

Filling:

Beat butter with electric mixer until it’s fluffy and creamy.

Add in Dulche de Leche, vanilla and condensed milk. Beat until it’s combined and gets creamy.

Assembling the cake:
We will stack tubes in layers of 6-5-4-3.
Line up 6 tubes on your serving dish; generously cover with the filling- repeat all the layers (except one tube less in each layer) until you finish tubes and filling.

Make sure the tubes are fully covered;

Decorate as desired; I sprinkled with shaved dark chocolate with cherries on top. Keep the cake at room temperature for 1 hour and then refrigerate preferably overnight.