Beautiful Babka

I thought I'd stick with my theme of ethnic cuisine and visit another recipe I tried this past weekend, for the very first time.

I have always been a great lover of babka.  Babka is very light bread, generally made with several to many egg yolks depending on which recipe you're following, which may or may not be filled with dried fruit and/or sweet cheese.

Some recipes call for up to 15 egg yolks.  I have an idea.  Just punch me in the chest and save me the time, because that's pretty much what will happen to my heart if I eat anything with that many egg yolks at once.

What I didn't know until recently is that there's a "Jewish" babka and a "Polish" babka.  I made the Polish variety for obvious reasons.  Namely...I'm Polish.  Come to think of it I'm sure there's a bunch more varieties depending on which corner of Europe you visit...

I adapted this recipe from one I found on Recipezaar.  There were a few elements which I knew I could do without - namely the addition of saffron, lemon flavoring and zest, and various fruits other than raisins.

Here's how the babka went down...

The first thing to do is to scald (heat to juuuust below boiling) 1 cup of milk, and allow it to cool to lukewarm.  This will take a little while so you might just wanna do this in advance.  In the meantime you can also allow your butter and egg yolks to come to room temperature.

When it's time to get the party started, dissolve a .25 oz packet of yeast in 1/4 cup of warm water.  Incidentally, I am finding that I'm getting better at gauging the correct temperature of water for this without a thermometer (because I broke mine - there, I said it).  It needs to be just around 110 degrees, any hotter and you'll kill the yeast.

While waiting for the yeast to bloom, cream together 10 tablespoons of softened butter and 1/2 cup of sugar.

Then take 4 room temperature egg yolks and add 1 teaspoon of salt, and beat them up with either a whisk or a fork until they get thicker.

That's three bowls of stuff happening at once.  You following so far?

Add your egg yolks to the butter/sugar creaminess and mix them in.

Add your yeast and water, which by this time have become beautiful and foamy, to the mix.

Add 1/2 tsp of cinnamon.

Then it's time to alternately add 5 cups of flour and your cup of lukewarm milk to the bowl.

Once everything has been beaten smooth, toss in 1 cup of golden raisins and mix them in as well.  This is, of course, where a stand mixer with a dough hook comes in handy.  Otherwise you could knead them in by hand - either way, work the dough until it is nice and smooth.

Now you need to cover the dough and leave it in a warm place for 1 to 1/2 hours.  I found that within 1 hour the dough had *almost* doubled in size, and being short on time that was good enough for me.  So I punched it down and let it rise for yet another hour.

Once that second hour was up, I made my cream cheese filling.  Mmmmmmm......

It's very simple.  You mix together 12 ounces of room temperature cream cheese, 1 egg yolk and 1/3 cup of sugar until they're all creamy and wonderful.

Now comes the sliiiiightly tricky part, and it's not even all that tricky.  You need to divide the dough in half (after you've punched it down a second time).  I used a cake pan to bake the babka in, so the first half went into the bottom of the pan just so I could get a feel for the size.  Remember that this is going to rise again, too, so leaving a tad bit of room around the edges would not be a bad idea.

Can you tell that I didn't do that?

Anyway, dump that dough out onto your work surface and spread the cream cheese filling on top.  Then repeat the sizing process with the other half of the dough.  What you want to do is make a sandwich, basically, and seal the edges as best you can so the cheese doesn't ooze out.

Because you really wanna be able to enjoy all of it.  Trust me.

Then put the entire dough-cream cheese sandwich back into the cake pan and let it rise for, you guessed it, another hour.  Honestly, I didn't think mine rose very much the last time and I was really depressed - all that work, all that time.  But I figured what the heck, might as well see it through.

Just before putting it in the 350 degree oven, brush the top with an egg yolk mixed with a splash of water.  It makes the end product all glisteny and wonderful.

The into your 350 degree oven it goes for 45 - 60 minutes.  Mine was ready in 50.

And look what happened to it!

Amazing! And to think I was all but ready to throw in the towel!

Here's another angle:

I love how it got all cracked and interesting looking.

Let me warn you, though: You need to GENEROUSLY butter your pan prior to baking this.  I had a heck of a time getting in out - again, leave a bit of room for that third rise!!

The taste? Like cinnamon raisin bread, but lighter, with a sweet cheese filling.  It was moist, it was flavorful, it was decadent.  And as of the typing of this last line...

It's all gone.  *wipes crumbs from mouth*

You have to give this a shot.  Seriously, it's just too good to not be experienced.

Enjoy!

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