This was homemade chocolate babka.
Chocolate babka has been on my wish list to bake since J and I really enjoyed New York's #1 chocolate babka from
Breads Bakery in Fall 2014. I was so glad to have a chance to make the babka wish come true this holiday season! One of the reasons why it took me so long to make babka was there were two recipes I wanted to try: Breads Bakery's babka
recipe that has been officially available online and a
recipe from my Jerusalem cookbook that was also adapted by smitten kitchen. Filling of Breads Bakery's babka is Nutella and semisweet chocolate chips; Jerusalem babka is cocoa powder and dark chocolate. Breads Bakery's recipe makes three loafs; Jerusalem makes two. After deep consideration, I decided to adapt a recipe from Jerusalem and follow changes made by smitten kitchen because I like dark chocolate and smitten kitchen's advice for each step was very helpful for me, a babka beginner.
My change was using three large eggs and one egg yolk for three extra large eggs. I also used Bread Machine to knead dough instead of standing mixer. The dough was easy to handle. For filling, I used
Valrhona 72% chocolate and premium Dutch cocoa powder "
Droste." Great chocolate makes great chocolate baked goods. That's my theory. After spreading the filing, roll, roll, roll.
Trim both ends and cut in half.
Twist.
I didn't have a 9" x 4" loaf pan, so I used a 10" x 4" and a 9" x 5". Actual baking time was longer than the recipe told me. At the end both loaves were beautifully baked!
Brush homemade syrup all over each. The syrup had a hint of rum that was another change I made.
I baked the trimmed ends in muffin pan. They looked like cinnamon rolls.
Time to taste!
It was pretty good! J and I liked it very much! Much better than
Green's. I liked orange zest that smitten kitchen's choice for the dough instead of lemon. The filling was wonderfully chocolaty. Not chalky or too bitter or sweet. Next time I may want to use natural-type cocoa powder instead of
Droste to see how the flavor would change. Perhaps next time could be to try Breads Bakery's recipe. Either way, J will see more babka coming out from our oven this new year!
