Wednesday, February 03, 2021

Chocolate Babka

This was on my list of recipes to try.  A friend had told me she really liked the chocolate babka at Trader Joe's so I tried that.  OK but it didn't shoot up to my "must have" crave list.  Then I spotted the recipe on the King Arthur website.   I had posted that link in an earlier post about all the chocolate recipes I had tried.  Pain au chocolat, chocolate braid and chocolate rolls were a some of the chocolate goals.

I rather forgot about the chocolate babka in my pursuit of better Italian breads.  I have made the pugliese and ciabatta twice along with those cheesy rolls.  So it was time for something sweeter. Another book I picked up at the library was The Modern Jewish Baker (Challah, Babka, Bagels and more) by Shannon Sarna.  I am still deciding on whether I will buy it or the Italian Baker.   If interested you can find it on Amazon, but she also has a blog . . . check it out at the-nosher/how-to-make-challah .

I made the Chocolate Babka on Monday. 



 The recipe makes 3 loaves.






 


Between the dough and the chocolate filling, it uses 3 sticks of butter . . . 24 tablespoons!!!  

And even with all that butter, I think the dough still tasted a bit off and my theory is NOT ENOUGH SALT . . the recipe calls for unsalted butter like a lot of recipes and, TBH, I have noticed a certain blandness in doughs.  I wonder if my taste buds are off.  I am going to test that out by using salted butter in another recipe or maybe half salted/half unsalted.

But enough about sweets!   I am planning on making empanadas this weekend . . . or whenever I get around to it.  I found recipes for both the dough and the filling.  I hate the idea of using premade frozen dough but whatever you want,

Empanada Dough

Argentinian Ground Beef Filling

THEN I might try to make another sweet bread with cardamom. Cardamom Knots the link has a paywall, so you might not be able to view the recipe more than one time so download the recipe first 

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