Chocolate babka

I've seen so many pictures of people baking these gorgeous-looking chocolate breads that I finally decided that I had to get to it and try baking one for myself. I'm using this recipe, but they all seem pretty similar; the major difference being quite how much butter, chocolate and sugar goes in. Also, we inherited an old Kenwood Chef recently(ish), so it was a good opportunity to try it out!

Chocolate Babka
Ingredients
For the dough

• 530g Plain flour
• 100g Caster sugar
• 1 sachet Fast-action dried yeast
• Zest of 1 small lemon
• 3 Eggs
• 120ml Water
• 3/4tsp Table salt
• 140g Butter
• 2tbsp Vegetable oil

For the filling

• 130g Dark chocolate
• 120g Butter
• 50g Caster sugar
• 30g Cocoa powder
• 1/4 tsp Cinnamon

For the syrup

• 80ml Water
• 75g Caster sugar

Method

1. Mix the flour, sugar (for the dough), yeast, lemon zest, eggs and water in a food mixer using the dough hook to form a rather dry dough.
2. Add the salt and butter (for the dough), spoon by spoon.
3. Mix on a low speed for ~10 minutes until smooth.
4. Turn into an oiled mixing bowl, cover and leave to prove in the fridge overnight.
5. Melt the chocolate and butter (for the filling) together.
6. Stir in the sugar, cocoa powder and cinnamon.
7. Divide the dough into two portions and roll out into a rectangle ~25cm x 30cm.
8. Spread the chocolate mixture onto the rolled out dough, leaving a 1cm edge at the end uncovered.
9. Roll the dough up, dampening the end to seal.
10. Chill in fridge for ~10-15 mins.
11. Cut in half lengthways, then plait/twist the two halves together, trying to keep the cut faces outwards, and pinch the top and bottom together.
12. Place into a greased loaf tin.
13. Cover and prove for 1-1/2 hours.
14. Bake at 190C for 25-30mins.
15. Place the water and sugar (for the syrup) in a pan and heat until the sugar dissolves.
16. Brush the syrup over the babkas as soon as they are removed from the oven.

I remembered a bit too late that I only had one loaf tin, so put both babkas into a brownie tin instead. This proved to be a bit of a mistake; they're already prone to being underbaked, and baking it in a single tin only exacerbates the matter. In the end, I baked them for around 50 minutes, and they were still pretty under done. But they still look amazing, don't they?

Aside from the fact that they were rather doughy (and possibly still raw in places...), they're pretty good. I think they definitely look better than they taste, which is always unfortunate, but that's mostly because they look gorgeous. The lemon zest really comes through, and is intially a bit startling, but is nice once you get used to it - I do think that orange would probably work better though. With a food mixer, this was surprisingly little effort, so I might give it another go next time I need to bring a dessert to a party or something. Without a mixer though, this would have been quite a lot of work - lots of kneading!