Baking, baking, baking!

I've been doing some baking in the past couple of weeks, and actually think I have sent some sort of treat with BK the past three weeks in a row. No occasion, typically just me baking one afternoon while Baby K naps, keeping a couple of whatever I made, and then sending the rest to work with BK.

The first couple of weeks I did some oldies, but goodies: chocolate chip cookies and cream cheese filled snicker doodles. They went over really well. Probably partially because they weren't expected by BK's new group. On top of that, I've never really met anyone he works with now, so they have no clue who is sending these treats, outside of BK's wife.

I was pleased that this is the response that I got though...

Thursday I set out to try something new: Better Chocolate Babkas. I think I wanted a challenge and to try something that was not my norm. I actually didn't even know what a babka was. It was just on a blog that I follow, looked interesting and challenging, so I thought I would give it a go.

Here's my finished product. Looks tasty right? It was.

Based on googling what is a chocolate babka, it is traditionally a Jewish dish, apparently with roots in Eastern Europe. I would describe it as a sweet bread with chocolate swirled throughout. It can turn out quite dry, but mine came out moist, with chocolate well distributed throughout. It's also best if eaten warm, so I told BK he needed to tell people to microwave it for best results.

It is quite a labor intensive process though, as in you need two days to complete this. Obviously not two full days of working, but you make the dough one day, let it rise over night, then carry on with the remainder of the recipe. I'm a firm believer that dough made from scratch is so much better that buying store-made dough and putting it into a recipe.

So here's how it went...

I tried mixing the dough with my hand mixer, but that didn't go so well.

So I ended up hand kneading the dough- an arm workout, but it turned out much better.

Then you let it rest overnight in the fridge so it can rise. The recipe I used makes two loaves; this is half of the dough.

Then you roll it out on a well-floured surface...also known as, make as big of a mess as possible in the kitchen.

Then you make your chocolate filling. It turns out like a paste that you spread on the dough. Nothing I make is low-fat, so don't be alarmed by the huge amount of butter.

Roll it up like a burrito, then stick it in the freezer for a few minutes.

Cut it in half and turn up so the chocolate insides are showing.

Then twist it together in the pan. This is easier said than done, but if you let the dough warm a little it's easier.

Bake for twenty-ish minutes, and voila, two days later you have your chocolate babka!

Yum; it was really good. I cut off about half of one loaf for us and sent the other one-and-a-half loaves with BK to work. Hopefully something new and interesting will come across in one of the blogs I read or on Pintrest this week and I'll try another new recipe.

For those of you who read my post the other day about trying to figure out what to do with myself, if you're wondering why I don't start baking as a job- that just takes the fun out of it. I would much rather it just be a labor of love and give stuff away, trying new things as I go and coming up with new favorites.