Bored baking: Babka

A slice of the finished product - please note artfully arranged strawberry.

I think towards the end of last week was when the boredom finally got to me: not just the boredom of having nothing to do, but a more existential form of boredom, encompassing the whole of the situation in which we find ourselves. The easing of lockdown hasn’t really helped: I have a suspicion it’s happening too quickly, and even if my husband wasn’t vulnerable, neither of us can drive, so we can’t exactly take advantage. Public transport hardly feels like a sensible option, even if we weren’t still being told to avoid it. I have recently even found myself feeling nostalgic for local bus services.


While I wouldn’t say it was a cure, it helps to make something new, and preferably something at least a little bit spectacular. It was time for babka. Babka is a kind of yeasted bread cake with a filling, usually chocolate, which is braided before baking. Google informs me that it is Ashkenazi Jewish in origin, and popular in Israel. We came across it when my husband had it for dessert at Honey & Co (run by two Israeli chefs) earlier this year (although it feels like a decade), and we were both blown away by it. The recipe is in the Honey & Co Baking book, and it has taken some time for me to feel ready to make it, for reasons that will probably become clear.


First of all, you need to make the dough the night before. Fortunately, I planned for this, having spent so long contemplating the recipe. Amounts and methods are given for both dried yeast and fresh, but with the note that fresh is definitely better. This worked for me, as I am running short on dried yeast, and our farmer’s market can now deliver fresh yeast, but not dried. The recipe says use a dough hook of a food processor. I don’t have a food processor, so I used the sort-of dough hooks that came with my hand whisk. They look like this:

It took a bit of bringing together by hand, but seemed to work fine. The dough then goes into the fridge overnight.

The dough: didn't look too promising at this stage

The next day, you need to first make the filling. Melt some butter, then add sugar, cinnamon and chocolate, and set aside to cool slightly. I used up the last of my caster sugar for this, and still didn’t have enough, so used some ordinary granulated: the texture of the final product probably suffered slightly because of this, but nothing too disruptive.


Then, you take the dough out of the fridge and roll it out, until you have a rectangle 50cm x 30cm (yes, I used a tape measure, as I am terrible at estimating lengths). Then, you spread it with the chocolate filling. It is also supposed to be sprinkled with hazelnuts, but I didn’t have any. I was going to use the last of my pistachios, but I forgot – I sprinkled some over the top instead once it was in the tin, which was fine.

Forgetting to add pistachios

Next comes the fun/complicated part. Roll up the dough, so you have something a bit like a swiss roll, then cut it down the middle, lengthwise, so you can see the layers of filling. The place one half over the other, so they cross in the middle, cut sides up. Plait each end together, so you end up with a fat plait. The instructions/pictures in the book are pretty good for this, but I think I might still have been a bit lost if Honey & Co hadn’t done a babka cookalong on their Instagram channel a few weeks ago.

Sort of swiss roll

Slightly messy plait, ready to go in its tin for proving

Having done all that, you stick your plait in a tin and leave it to prove for a couple of hours, then egg wash and bake, although even that bit isn’t that simple. You give it ten minutes, then turn it around in the oven, then another ten minutes, then you turn the heat down for the final ten minutes. While it’s in the oven, you need to make a sugar syrup (you can probably see by now why I needed to psyche myself up for this one). When the babka comes out of the oven, you need to pour the sugar syrup over it, and leave it to cool, before taking out of the tin and slicing.

Just out of the oven

After slicing

It was very, very good, and very filling. It’s supposed to freeze well, so half of it has gone into the freezer for future reference, as it is not the kind of cake that can be eaten by two people before it goes past it’s best. As I said, while it’s not exactly a cure for existential boredom, it’s not a bad place to start, and it certainly keeps you occupied for a while...


PS With the remaining yeast, I made focaccia, to a recipe from The Sportsman cook book, which also demands fresh yeast.  

Focaccia