“Firewood on Snow” Cake

Ingredients:

• 
  Cake:
  About 3 cups of flour (or a bit more)
• 6.5 oz of margarine (about 1 2/3 sticks)
• 1 cup of sour cream
• 1 teaspoon of baking soda
• Vinegar, about 1 teaspoon
• 2 pint jars of pitted sour cherry kompot or pitted cherries preserved in sugar
• 1/4 cup of sugar (optional)
• 
  Frosting:
  25 oz of original sour cream
• 1/3 cup of sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla sugar
• Up to 1/2 cup of kefir (optional)

How to prepare, step-by-step:

1. Prepare ingredients: sour cream frosting should me liquid enough to soak into baked dough, but not too liquid to it doesn’t run: if sour cream you have is too liquid drain excessive liquid through coffee filter before preparing frosting, on other hand if sour cream is too thick dilute it with kefir:

   

2. Pour about 2 cups of flour into deep bowl, and all margarine (at room temperature):

   

3. Mix margarine with flour using fork or pastry blender:

   

4. Add sour cream, if kompot isn’t sweet enough (as an opposite to sour cherries preserved in just their own juices and sugar) add about 1/4 of sugar too, mix everything:

   

5. Pour vinegar over baking soda, after they start reacting, mix them in:

   

6. Continue mixing flour in until dough becomes thick enough to work with it by hands:

   

7. Then pour dough over flour dusted wooden board, knead couple of times, add more flour if needed:

   

8. Separate dough in 18 pieces (with that amount you can make either 5 + 4 + 4 + 3 + 2 layers setup like I did or 6 + 5 + 4 + 3 layers if you wish, if you want to lay sticks differently – just adjust amount of pieces at this point):
   

   

   

   

   
   
9. Drain liquid from cherries, this recipe calls for cherries only, kompot can be used for jello or anything else (picture shows only 1 jar, I did them one by one):

   

10. Lay 2 baking sheets with parchment paper; prepare “firewood” sticks from dough bolls and cherries, stick length should be close to width of you baking sheets (roll dough thin, move ready sticks to prepared baking sheets):
    

    

    

    

    
    
11. Prepare firewood “sticks” from all dough and cherries:

    

12. Warm oven up to 390F. Put both sheets with sticks to oven for 20-25 mins (some juices may come out, that is ok), don’t bake too long or dough will become too dry and will require longer time for soaking to become soft later:

    

13. Now it is time to prepare frosting: if frosting isn’t liquid enough the cake will not be soft, so if needed add a bit of kefir to get it to required thickness, but not too much:
    

    

    

    

    
    
14. Now it is time to assemble the cake: as I mentioned earlier, I did 5 + 4 + 4 + 3 + 2 sticks setup of layers; if you have any broken sticks put them in the middle layers and in the center of a layer:
    

    

    

    

    
    

    

    

    

    
    
15. Leave cake in cool place (but not in fridge) for a day to soak in sour cream (I covered it with plastic wrap and put close by the window):

    

16. Next day cake is ready, slice it up and serve:

    

Enjoy!