In the past year, I made babka several times. Babka is something I grew up eating only occasionally, but it has been all the rage online. The recipes I made were Shimi Aaron's chocolate babka (he is an Israeli-born, LA-based baker, and I've never actually eaten his creations, but boy are they gorgeous!) and Shannon Sarna's birthday cake babka (she is a cookbook author whom I came to know listening to the Call Your Mother podcast. I also watched a video of her participating in a brisket competition once, and she was so kind and generous in her judgments of the competitors' briskets; I was really impressed.).
The chocolate babka was gorgeous. It is an enriched dough, rolled up with chocolate, sliced, twisted, and baked, and then drizzled with sugar syrup that ensures it is moist and heavy and delicious. The birthday cake babka was also good, but that is not my favorite flavor (it is my daughter's go-to and I made it with her in mind). I found it overly sweet. It's also possible I'm just traditional and babka with sprinkles doesn't seem right to me. I can't accept blueberry bagels, either. Anyway, both were fun to make. I am still mastering the technique: I need to decide whether to bake the babkas in loaf pans or to commit to an open bake on a cookie sheet. The ones destined for the loaf pans were too long, and I ended up twisting them in half to fit. Shimi Aaron bakes his on a cookie sheet and they come out beautifully. Frankly, when you cut into the babka and see the many layers, it looks lovely no matter what!
The one on the left oozed and had a lot of chocolate on the top. While some would argue that's not a problem, it does destroy the elegance of the visible layers.
Just look at those layers! All that chocolate! So good.
Babka takes a pretty decent time commitment. It is not hard per se, but it does require some specific skill to make the yeasted dough (which does not require kneading, so easy-peasy), roll it out, and shape the babka. After making it a few more times, I should feel a little more comfortable handling the dough. I think I most enjoyed feeling like I was making a very traditional Jewish (eastern European Ashkenazi) food that I don't eat very often, so that alone was worth it!
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