Green's Chocolate Babka & Hamentashen

This was Green's chocolate babka.

I have been looking for gifts for my family in Japan. Mostly food. It should be made in the US, delicious, of course; rare or valuable in Japan; enable to travel easy, which means not too big, heavy or fragile; and can be stored well in a room temperature, hopefully for 2-3 weeks or at least 10 days. My family likes chocolate. How about chocolate babka? Although I wasn't sure whether October in Japan would be cool enough for chocolate and so many high quality chocolate products are available in Japan, I thought it would be lovely to share the Eastern European holiday cake with my family. One from Breads Bakery in NYC that we enjoyed last year was my top candidate, but it didn't meet my criteria in terms of the product life. After searching other potential babka, I found Green's. Apparently the Brooklyn bakery is the leader of the babka market. Several well-known delis in NYC, like Katz's and Zabar's, repackage and sell Green's. So do grocery chains from high-end to low, including Dean & Deluca, Whole Foods, Wegmans and Walmart.

Green's sell their baked goods via online directly, too. Their chocolate babka stays fresh in unopened sealed bag for 6 to 8 weeks. Great! Meanwhile, I was suspicious about the long shelf life. However, the ingredients of their chocolate babka were very short and simple. No preservative or artificial stuffs. The babka was nice, honestly, not great like Breads Bakery's but fair enough as a grocery cake. Moist and not too sweet. As I ate more, I became to like it more.

I also bought Hamentashen from Green's. J seemed to like these Jewish holiday cookies. They had a good texture and flavor as grocery cookies.

Yet I haven't been convinced of the babka as a suitable gift at this moment. I will think about it a bit more. On the other hand, I am sure the cookies won't be a gift because they were so fragile.