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,
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
