First time for Babka!

It's time for another student cake!  Today's baker has a Jewish/Israeli heritage. Indeed after her internship she is headed to Israel for the month of August. Not bad!  To fulfill her obligation she decided to prepare something that reflected on her heritage and came up with a Babka! She found a recipe online and undertook to prepare this classic Jewish/Eastern European treat.

This is something grandmother would have made!

It's Babka in a pan!

 

Streusel on the top adds texture!

In some respects this is a cross between a cake and bread.  It is a yeast dough that is twisted into a shape and includes either chocolate or cinnamon as a filling.  You could say it is a cake version of a cinnamon or chocolate roll. Our baker today opted for the chocolate version. Since the dough is twisted and then baked the filling forms shapes throughout that are seen when it is cut.  This makes for a nice visual effect.  The top is covered with streusel which is made from butter, sugar and flour.  Streusel is very commonly strewn across the tops of coffee cakes and the like so it was appropriate here.

Good and solid and tough to cut at first!

The twisting of filled dough makes for some stripes inside!

Today's baker made two solid bricks of Babka.  They were baked to a golden brown. I don't know if it was the batter or the added streusel but the outside was very hard at first and made for some interesting cutting. Once you got through the edge it was perfectly fine.  It certainly tasted good, went great with coffee and seemed to go over well with all.  There was a whole one left over so we let today's student take some home to share with the family.  Given that she wanted to share something special and the quality of the homemade product this gets our four star rating.