Chocolate Babka (GBBO Technical 4)

 

I was so excited about this bake when I heard it. Babka is another bake I've wanted to try for ages, and it looked and sounded so good on the show. It did not disappoint! 

Finding the recipe turned out to be a bit more difficult this time around. For some reason, they haven't posted it on the GBBO website, but I was able to find a recipe here that claims to be the one from the show. 

Of course, if you're making a chocolate babka, you need to use some good quality German chocolate... I think the 70% dark was the right choice. Milk chocolate would almost certainly be too sweet. 

To make the filling, you melt the dark chocolate with butter and sugar over low heat (I used a bain-marie). Then you stir in the cocoa powder and allow it to cool.

The dough is an enriched dough, pretty similar in feel to the dough my family uses for cinnamon rolls. I had to use a little more milk and a little more flour to get it to come together and be the right consistency, and it took lots of time to incorporate the butter, but in the end I had a very nice ball of  dough to work with.

Roll out to roughly 40 x 30 cm.

Add the chocolate filling, leaving a border all the way around. There was a lot of filling and I was worried it would all leak out, but I was able to roll it without it all squeezing out and I was pleased with that.

Then add the hazelnuts. I just used hazelnuts I had on hand, which weren't blanched, and I skipped toasting them. I don't think it made a difference, personally. 

Then roll it up from the long end like a cinnamon roll and pinch it together. 

Then I put the seam side down and trimmed the two ends so that they would be pretty.

Next, using a good sharp knife, you cut down the dough and turn the two strips on their side so you can see inside. 

Pinch the top together, do a two strand plait (basically just a twist), and then pinch together the ends at the bottom. 

I had to squish mine a bit to get it in the pan, but it fit! Yay! Then it sits and proves for two hours.

Post-proving picture! Then it's baking time! While it bakes, you're supposed to make a little syrup to put over top when it's done. 

Out of the oven and drizzled with syrup! Beautiful! 

I could not believe how pretty and delicious it was! It was sweet but not too sweet, quite chocolatey, but not overwhelming. The whole family loved it. The bread itself turned out really well and seemed to me to be cooked pretty much perfectly. It was light and soft, and the hazelnuts added some great texture. I will definitely be making this again, and I'll probably try some other babka recipes as well. It gets five stars from me!