Chocolate Babka #TwelveLoaves March

Chocolate Babka #TwelveLoaves March | Bakewell Junction

Mmmm….  Look at those chocolate swirls.

Chocolate Babka #TwelveLoaves March 2 | Bakewell Junction

Chocolate Babka is one of those things that I’ve wanted to try baking for several years.  I had printed a copy of the recipe I had seen on Smitten Kitchen and had it with all my other recipes (this was long before Pinterest became popular).  Thinking this would be a great recipe for #TwelveLoaves March which is featuring Holiday Breads, I decided to make it.

Babka in Polish means Grandmother and was traditionally made for Easter.  It was also a tradition in Lithuania, Slovakia, Belarus, Ukraine and Western Russia.  Another version of Babka (Chocolate Babka) is associated with Eastern European Jews.  The history behind Babka is a little confusing.  From what I’ve read on the internet, it’s debated as to who started the Babka tradition but it’s usually made around Easter.

This recipe contains a ton of butter and a ton of chocolate.  It is decadent, delicious and smells heavenly.  I would highly recommend breaking the Lenten fast with this sweet bread.  Although it takes a while to make this recipe, I had great results – my dough rose well and it was easy to roll out.  I did have one mishap because I don’t have three of the 9 by 5 loaf pans, so my attempt to put two of the loaves side by side in a half aluminum tray didn’t work out so well.  They were very dense and gooey in the middle but that didn’t alter the taste and they were devoured quickly anyway.  The only thing I would change for next time it to double the crumb topping recipe – you can never have too many crumbs.

Have you ever had Babka?  Which type do you prefer – chocolate filling, cinnamon filling, raisins, etc?

If you’re interested in additional Easter recipes that I make, try my Easter Bread or Prosciutto Bread (Lard Bread) recipes.  They’re delicious too.

Enjoy!

Chocolate Babka

Yield:  3 Loaves                  Cook Time:  70 minutes

Dough:

• 1 1/2 cups milk, warmed to 110 degrees
• 2 1/4 ounce packages active dry yeast or 4 1/2 teaspoons yeast
• 3/4 cup sugar plus a another pinch
• 2 large eggs at room temperature
• 2 large egg yolks at room temperature
• 6 cups flour plus more for dusting
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter at room temperature plus additional for bowl and loaf pans (or you can use cooking spray instead of additional butter)

Egg Wash:

• 1 egg at room temperature
• 1 tablespoon heavy cream

Filling:

• 2 1/4 pounds very finely chopped semisweet chocolate (I substituted a combination of Hershey’s and Lindt’s milk chocolate candy)
• 2 1/2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
• 1 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter at room temperature

Streusel Topping:

• 1 2/3 cups powdered sugar
• 1 1/3 cups flour
• 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter at room temperature

Directions:

Step 1:  Warm milk in the microwave to 110 degrees.  One minute and 25 seconds works in my glass 2 cup measure.  I used my candy thermometer to check the temperature.  If you are transferring to a small bowl, warm the bowl so the milk doesn’t cool.  Add the pinch of sugar and yeast to the milk and give a quick stir.  Set aside for about 5 minutes.  The mixture should become foamy.

Step 2:  Stir together 3/4 cup sugar, 2 eggs and yolks in a medium bowl.  Combine yeast and egg mixtures and mix thoroughly.

Step 3:  Add the flour and salt to the bowl of an electric mixer and give a quick stir.  Add the wet mixture to the flour and beat on low with the paddle attachment for about 30 seconds to combine.  Swap out the paddle attachment for the dough hook.  Cut 2 sticks of butter into 1 inch pieces and add to the dough.  Beat with the dough hook until butter is combined.  This will take approximately 10 minutes.  The dough will be soft and barely sticky.

Step 4:  On a clean work surface, lightly sprinkle some flour.  Place the dough on the floured surface.  You may need to scrap the bowl and dough hook to get every last bit of the wonderful dough.  Knead a minute or two.  Prepare a large bowl by buttering it or spraying with cooking spray.  Transfer dough to prepared bowl and turn to coat butter/cooking spray.  Cover bowl with plastic wrap.  Let dough rise in a warm spot for 1 hour to double in size.  My house is always cool so, while I prepare the dough, I boil a pot of water and place it in my oven along with the dough.  This creates a great environment for the dough to rise.

Step 5:  Filling:  Mix the chocolate, 1 cup sugar and cinnamon in a large bowl.  Cut in 1 1/2 sticks of butter using a pastry cutter until you have a homogeneous mixture.

Step 6:  Egg wash:  In a small bowl, beat egg and heavy cream together.

Step 7:  Butter the loaf pans or spray with cooking spray then line with parchment paper. Punch down the dough and wait for 5 minutes before cutting into thirds.  Cover resting dough while working with the first piece of dough.  Flour the work area.  Roll the first piece of dough until it’s about 1/8 inch thick.  It should be about 16 by 16 inch square.

Step 8:  Using the egg wash, moisten the edges of the rolled dough.  Evenly crumble 1/3 (about 2 1/2 cups) of the chocolate mixture minus 2 tablespoons on rolled dough up to about 1/4 from the edge of the dough.  Beginning at one side of the dough, roll the dough up until you reach the opposite side.  Pinch the dough together to seal the edges.  The dough needs to be twisted along it’s length 5 or 6 times.  Moisten the top of the rolled dough with the egg wash.  Sprinkle 2 tablespoons of the chocolate mixture on half the roll and press into the dough.  Fold the side of the dough roll without the chocolate mixture onto the side with the chocolate mixture.  Seal edges by pinching.  Twist the roll twice and place in loaf pan.  Repeat  rolling dough through placing in loaf pan for each of the other doughs.

Step 9: Streusel Topping:  Add powdered sugar, flour and butter in a large bowl.  Mix to combine and create small to large crumbs.

Step 10:  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Loosely cover with plastic wrap and let doughs rise for 20 to 30 minutes in a warm spot.  Moisten the tops of the loaves with the egg wash.  Sprinkle the top of each loaf with 1/3 of the streusel.

Step 11:  Place loaves in preheated oven and bake 55 minutes until golden, rotating loaves midway during baking.  Lower temperature to 325 degrees and bake another 15 to 20 minutes until loaves are darker golden.  Cool completely on wire racks.  Depan loaves and try not to eat an entire loaf.

Storing:  Store loaves in a sealed plastic container or covered with plastic wrap.

Tips:

• To finely chop the chocolate easily, break it up into inch size pieces initially.  In small batches, use a food processor or mini chopper to chop it finely.
• The dough can be frozen for 1 month after preparing up to the point where they are ready to be placed in the oven.  Remove the dough from the freezer and wait 5 hours before baking.
• If your house is chilly like mine always is and your dough doesn’t rise, you can boil a pot of water while preparing the dough and place the water and dough in a cold oven.  The boiling water will create a warm moist environment in the oven for the dough to rise well.

Enjoy!!!

Recipe from Smitten Kitchen, originally from Martha Stewart.

What is baking this March in the TwelveLoaves kitchens? Holiday Breads!

#TwelveLoaves March:  Holiday Bread.  Bake a bread, yeast or quick bread, loaf or individual.  This #TwelveLoaves is all about the incredible holiday breads featured in March.  Do you have a favorite Easter or St. Patrick’s Day Bread?  We would love to see it.  Let’s get baking!

Look at what our very talented #TwelveLoaves bakers have created this March!

• Grammy’s Italian Easter Bread by Dorothy at Shockingly Delicious
• Hot Cross Buns by Holly at A Baker’s House
• American Irish Soda Bread by Renee at Magnolia Days
• Hot Cross Buns by Lora at Cake Duchess
• Pinca: Croatian Easter Bread by Sherron at Simply Gourmet
• Jamaican Zucchini Spiced Bun by Lyn at The Lovely Pantry
• Plaited Easter Bread with Cream Cheese Filling by Liz at That Skinny Chick Can Bake
• Greek Easter Bread by Alice at Hip Foodie Mom

We would love to have you join our #TwelveLoaves group; it’s easy!
1.  When you post your Twelve Loaves bread on your blog, make sure that you mention the Twelve Loaves challenge in your blog post; this helps us to get more members as well as share everyone’s posts.  Please make sure that your Bread is inspired by the theme!
2.  Please link your post to the linky tool at the bottom of Lora’s blog (Cake Duchess) or the link below.  It must be a bread baked to the Twelve Loaves theme.
3.  Have your Twelve Loaves bread that you baked this March, 2013 posted on your blog by March 31, 2013.

You are next… Click here to enter

Follow @TwelveLoaves on Twitter

See what’s freshly baked for #TwelveLoaves on the growing Pinterest board.

This post may also be entered in the following linky party. Click the button below to see the other great posts in the blog hop.

Grow Your Blog Link Party

Good Thursday morning and welcome to the Grow Your Blog (or GYB) blog hop! Paula and I are so happy to have you link up with us this week. And we happily welcome any new bloggers to the party! How has your week been? Do you have any plans for the weekend?

What is the Grow Your Blog Hop all about? NETWORKING! Meeting new bloggers, finding new content to follow, building your readership. Why is blog networking great for you? Simply put, it increases readership and traffic to your blog. How do you network? Visit. Comment. Invite. Communicate. These are key to growing your blog.

THIS WEEK’S HOSTS & LOVELY CO-HOSTS!

Julie from This Gal Cooks (HOST)
Paula from Call Me PMc (HOST)
Martine from Way Beyond the Naked Truth (CO-HOST)
Annamaria from Bakewell Junction (CO-HOST)
Esther from Esther Norine Designs (CO-HOST)
Kait from High Heels and Hot Deals (CO-HOST)

WHEN YOU LINK UP TO THIS PARTY:

• Follow your hosts and co-hosts
• Link up the main page of your blog, not an individual post. You may link up your individual posts to Marvelous Mondays.
• Visit and follow other bloggers
• Comment to let them know that you stopped by and how you followed (Email, GFC, Facebook, Bloglovin, etc)
• Invite them to visit your blog (be sure to leave your blog web address – too many times have i seen bloggers comment and request a visit to their blog without leaving their blog web address)
• Communicate with them about what you like on their blog. Let them know you are interested in their blog. USE THEIR NAME! A simple “I’m so and so stopping by. I followed you please follow me.” just isn’t going to interest someone into visiting your blog. Sure, you can request a visit to your blog or a follow along but engage in some type of conversation first.
• Grab a button and promote the party (you can get the button on This Gal Cooks right here.)

12 Weeks of Christmas Treats ~ Week 3 ~ Phil’s Grandmother’s Italian Cookies

It’s the third week of the 12 Weeks of Christmas Treats blog hop hosted by Brenda Thompson from MealPlanningMagic.com.  If you’d like to join us, please fill out the form on Brenda’s blog.

Last week I wrote about the Pizzelle cookie which is a Christmas a tradition in my family.  This week I’m making a cookie that has been a tradition in my brother-in-law’s family.  My sister’s husband’s family makes this cookie during Christmas and other holidays all year long.  When my sister began making them and bringing them to family gatherings, we found that we loved them and then added them to our Christmas cookie list.  Once I began making these cookies regularly, I’ve developed a method for forming and baking the cookies.

These cookies have a melt-in-your-mouth quality.  They are light and slightly sweet which is a perfect foil for the sweet frosting.  Being small and bite-size makes them easy to pop in your mouth and, trust me, you won’t be able to stop at just one.  Small cookies don’t really have any calories do they?

One recipe makes a lot of cookies but since they’re small, I don’t see this as a problem.  I give these away to friends and family.  If I’m visiting, I bring along a variety of cookies and these are always included.

Enjoy.

The dough is pretty easy to mix but handling the dough is needs some show and tell.  After the dough is chilled, cut the dough into quarters.

Cut thin slices from the dough currently being used, similar to french fries.

Rounding the edges with your fingertips.

Cut the dough into three inch strips.

Begin creating the vertical cork screw.

Bring the dough around.

Finish the cork screw.

Ready for the oven.

Hot out of the oven.

Barely golden on the bottom.

Frosted deliciousness.

Phil’s Grandmother’s Italian Cookies

Yield:  190 – 200 cookies                  Cook Time:  10 minutes

Ingredients

Cookie Dough:

• 1/2 pound or 2 sticks butter (softened or melted – I melt the butter)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 4 large eggs
• 8 teaspoons baking powder
• 4 cups flour plus some additional for dusting while forming the cookies

Icing:

• 1/4 pound or 1 stick butter melted
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 2 pound box or 3 1/3 – 4 cups of confectioners sugar
• 1 to 2 tablespoons milk (after adding 1 1/2 tablespoons, add remaining milk in small increments)
• Red and green food coloring, optional

Directions:

Step 1:  For the cookies, preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper and set aside.

Step 2:  With an electric mixer cream butter, sugar and vanilla together.  Stir in the baking powder and 4 cups of flour until combined.  Place dough in a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and chill for easier handling; at least 4 1/2 hours (I usually chill overnight).

Step 3:  Once the dough has chilled long enough, remove it from the refrigerator and cut it in quarters with three parallel cuts.  Remove a quarter of the dough out of the refrigerator at a time to form the cookies, so the dough doesn’t get too soft and sticky.  Place the remaining dough into the refrigerator until ready to shape the next quarter batch.

Step 4:  Sprinkle a clean work surface with flour.  Place the quarter of dough removed from the refrigerator on the work surface and cut a thin slice (about 1/4 inch thick); then cut the slice into french fry shapes.  Break the pieces of dough into about three inch lengths and round the edges longways with your fingertips so the three inch lengths look like they were rolled.  Twist the dough into a vertical corkscrew curl and place on the baking sheet.  Place each cookie about a half inch apart.  Repeat until all the dough is finished from the quarter batch removed from the refrigerator.

Step 5:  Repeat step 4 for the remaining three quarters of dough until all the dough has been shaped into cookies.  Bake cookies for 10 minutes, one cookie sheet at a time.  When done, the cookies should be set and the bottoms should show barely a hint of golden color.  Let cool completely.

Step 6:  For the frosting, mix the butter, sugar, vanilla and 1 tablespoon milk together in a medium bowl.  Add the remaining tablespoon of milk in small increments as necessary to reach a creamy but not runny consistency.

Step 7:  For festive colors divide frosting into batches.  Stir in drops of red food coloring into one batch until the desired shade is reached.  Place a dollop of frosting on each cookie.  Repeat with green food coloring.

Step 8:  Let frosting dry for several hours or overnight and then store in an airtight container.

Tips:  If the entire recipe yields too many cookies for you the recipe can easily be cut in half.  Handling the dough to much can make the cookies tough.  Cooking them too long can make them dry.  If some of the cookies are stuck together during baking, this will just make it easier to frost – they can be broken apart after the frosting dries.

Storing:  Store cookies in a sealed plastic container.  The cookies are fine for several days when stored this way.

Variations:  After chilling, you can roll the dough and use cookie cutters to shape the cookies.

Enjoy!!!

Adapted from my brother-in-law’s family recipe.

Have a look at the other great cookies in the blog hop by clicking on the Linky Tools link below.

12 Weeks of Christmas Treats Blog Hop

Week 3, October 11, 2012

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Never Forget September 11, 2001

The above pictures are from the 9/11 Memorial site showing where my cousin’s name is located on the memorial.

On September 11, 2001 I had taken the day off from work to take my Father to an appointment.  In the morning I was exercising on the treadmill, totally unaware of what was unfolding and what was about to unfold.  Then I received a call from my co-worker.  We worked in mid-town Manhattan at the time and she alerted me to a plane striking the first tower.  I stopped what I was doing and turned on the TV.  At first no one knew what was happening.  The first plane had hit and they thought it was an accident.  There was no mistake when another plane hit the second tower.  I told my co-worker to leave the office and go home immediately.

There was so much confusion and it was hard to believe this could happen in the United States.  As the events unfolded in Manhattan, my eyes never left the TV for the rest of the day.  I watched in real time as second plane hit and then the towers collapsed.  Since nothing had ever happened like this before, it was unbelievable even though we were seeing it with our own eyes.  The whole day was surreal and I felt numb.

I could only think that I had been in lower Manhattan just a week before and I felt that I had been lucky that it wasn’t on the 11^th.

It was couple of days before I knew the full extent of how these events affected me personally and those close to me.

In the next couple of days I found out that my cousin had perished in the first building.  She worked on one of the floors that was the initial impact zone.  Although some people received phone calls from the loved ones they lost, no one heard from Loretta and no remains were ever identified.  Her Mom searched the newspapers everyday for the rest of her life looking for some information that Loretta had been found but to no avail.  Another cousin worked in the Mariott and was helping someone on the street when his best friend ran into one of the buildings to help but the friend perished.  This caused my cousin a lot of distress and grief.  My neighbor barely escaped with his life as the towers collapsed and debris fell everywhere.  A current co-worker was in lower Manhattan on that day and he has given me pictures he took when his company finally realized that they needed to let the employees go home.

In the days after the attack when people began returning to work, there was an eerie feeling on Manhattan streets even in mid-town.  There were much fewer people on the streets in the days and weeks after that fateful day.  As time passed things seemingly started returning to old routines but beneath the surface September 11th changed all Americans.

In recent years I’ve heard some saying that we need to move on.  I disagree.  I’ve taken September 11th as a vacation day every year since 2001.  I watch the Memorial so I can hear them read the names of all those that died during the attack including my cousin’s name.  I also know that others believe in a conspiracy theory and yet others that believe that we deserved this.  To the latter I would say – how could my cousin have deserved this as an American Express Corporate Travel Agent?  As for the former, I can’t believe that our government would do this to our own citizens.

No sense can be made of this terrible attack.

Last year Lori from Recipe Girl had a lovely post, remembering 9/11.  There are some additional sites that have poignant messages and pictures:  September 11, 2001; Remember September 11, 2001; 9/11 Memorial Guide.

We must never forget.  I know I never will.  Will you remember?