I'm curious. I've just looked at the whole first page of Google results for "babka recipe" and there were only two which didn't have ingredients I would expect most people such as yourself who bake already had- one had cardamom and one had halva. So what expensive ingredients have you found?

Why would one put halva in babka??? The texture difference would be nasty and bringing the honey into it is just kind of weird.

The KA recipe may be okay, but the picture is all wrong. That looks more like chocolate challah--just a ribbon running through. Really good babka has the chocolate layers and bread layers of equal thickness and is twisted into a pleasing pattern when cut. There shouldn't be thick bready parts or gobby chocolate parts and the chocolate shouldn't ooze out of the bread. You should be able to unwind it (if you're a play with your food kid), but not separate the chocolate from the bread. There should be no holes.

http://zuckerbakery.com/products/chocolate-babka-store  Here's a nice one with a pattern I haven't seen before. The iconic pattern of a slice looks like a striped palmier or elephant ear.

Re ingredients, with chocolate/cocoa powder you definitely get what you pay for, but that intensity of chocolate really isn't called for and regular baking chocolate should be fine. You could get away with cheap butter, but best not to stint on nuts. :) You don't have to use nuts at all, though.

Having just done a web review, I've seen some pictures of pretty mediocre babka put out by very well regarded bakers. Sigh.

Unfortunately, I don't have a good recipe for you. The best I can say is bake early, and if you have a cold stone counter you can roll on, all the better. Get the dough as thin as you can and make the filling as even as you can.

Best of luck!

The halva recipe was on www.haaretz.com- the halva was crushed and sprinkled over the chocolate layer.

Colleen, that's not surprising. In the Holy Land there's even brownies with halva. You'll probably not be able to read the recipe but there's a photo:

http://www.foodsdictionary.co.il/Recipes/8081

Land of milk and halva.

I'm not the one who's surprised, wintercat, it's plllog :-)

Coloured halva? Now I've seen everything :-)

Pity that website doesn't have an English translation, there was a recipe for custard-filled pastries (at least, that LOOKED like custard) which I would love to try :-(

LOL!! Land of milk and halva, indeed. :) I love halva. But I don't think I'd love it in babka. I don't even love nuts in it, but they're okay if they're finely ground. Brownies is another story. They're supposed to have differently textured lumps!

Colleen, I'll gladly do that recipe into English. Can't find what you're referring to, though. Could you post a link to the recipe you're interested in?

Wintercat and Colleenoz, google translated the site very well for me. give it a try.

Hi wintercat, it was this one:

http://www.foodsdictionary.co.il/Recipes/3045

Weirdly it was one of several suggestions dotted down the right side of the page yesterday, that were not there today :-( So I made a red hot guess at what might be a link to pages of baked goods (it was :-) ) and 16 pages later, I found it! :-D Google translate has done a reasonable, if slightly idiosyncratic version. Apparently I will need to get me a "hand fluff" LOL (I think that's a whisk).

Here it is, Colleen. Seems to be some sort of the lazy cook's Cremeschnitte.

Mini Cremeschnitte

21 servings, depending on size

Ingredients

800 gr puff pastry

Crème Pâtissière

2 1/2 cups milk (600 ml)

3 egg yolks (54 gr)

1/2 cup sugar

20 gr vanilla sugar or 1 vanilla pod

2 heaping Tbs flour (50 gr)

1 Tbs corn flour (9 gr)

50 gr butter

Heavy cream-based cream

250 ml heavy cream (38% gat)

2 heaping Tbs vanilla flavored instant pudding powder
(38 gr)

3 Tbs powdered sugar for sprinkling

Preparation

1. Crème Pâtissière

Warm up the milk, and while it's warming whisk egg
yolks, sugar and vanilla sugar in a separate bowl. Add flour and corn flour and
keep on whisking for smooth texture. When milk is nearing boiling point, slowly
pour 1/2 cup into yolk mixture (in order to keep temperature even), and pour
contents of the bowl into milk pot on the burner. Keep on stirring on small
flame for 7 minutes until mixture thickens. Remove from burner, let cool a bit,
add butter, mix until butter is absorbed, cover and refrigerate.

1. Whisk heavy cream with pudding powder, fold into Crème Pâtissière until texture is smooth.

1. Cut puff pastry into rectangles 8x7 cm (or
   whichever size you wish). If you want to form cups, [instructions baffle me here. I believe you know how to create cups,
   colleen!]

1. Bake 10-15 minutes at 180 C until golden, let cool,
   fill with cream, sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Thanks, wintercat. I think the instant pudding powder could probably be safely left out :-)

Google Translate called it "Mini Cream Shnit" but what was really weird were lines like "A homemade carnivore" and "Vanilla krishnite with dough leaves for ready-made carnivorous" =:-0

Enjoy your hand fluff! LOL

Hand fluff, : )

Here is some eye candy for inspiration. serious eats babka

I've had a few of those. Also a no-knead recipe on the site.

The ingredients are pretty basic. Get good chocolate though. I suppose you were referring to the halva as an expense but isn't needed.

In the U.S. 'Fluff' either means Marshmallow Creme, or something else altogether. That 'something else' might very possibly get me in a heap of trouble here.

In any case, I also have a very traditional recipe for Chocolate Babka, and we like it. But the addition of Halvah sounds intriguing to me, and may be my next project.

Sol

Sol - please post the recipe.

Back to my original question Ricky- what were the "very expensive ingredients" in the recipes you found?

OK, now you guys have made me look up Jewish bakeries so I can try this yummy thing out. The nearest likely bakery is 47 min away if traffic is good. It was so much easier when DD lived in LA - lots of choices there.

Colleen - considering that I only use organic ingredients I figured it would be at least $25 to make one loaf, and the recipes all called for two out of their ingredient list. Chocolate alone was $15! Add to that the degree of difficulty in these recipes and this becomes an expensive project at high risk. I'm a fairly new baker, and while I can bake cookies and bread, babka is going to the next level in terms of skill. I have four recipes under consideration right now. I'll bake one next week and see what happens.

Suzanne, make sure you get references before driving to even the nearest one. Good babka is amazing. Especially in the middle if it's properly non-goopy. Not good babka can be dry as the desert during chamsin, stale straight from the oven, totally flavorless, humorless, crude, etc.

Ricky,

Why not practice with less expensive ingredients for the filling? Getting the bread part right is the hard part and you could use peanut butter or something, made to the consistency of your melted chocolate. Even if it doesn't make a proper confection, I think it would be good toast.

Even if it doesn't turn out perfect, I bet it will still taste great. That's how you learn anyway.

Ricky, if it's costing you $25 for the ingredients to make ONE loaf, then you definitely need to find a different source for your ingredients!!!!

So make cinnamon babka for the practice rounds. When you have the bread recipe and the rolling & shaping technique down pat, then spring for the pricey chocolate. (Personally, w/o having ever eaten babka, I think I would prefer the cinnamon version to the chocolate. Babka sounds very similar to Swedish tea ring w/ cinnamon & sugar filling, something I used to make & eat often.)

I like the idea of trying a cinnamon babka first. As far as the other ingredients go... when I made the decision to go organic, it was based on "whenever possible." To bake something without organic flour, organic sugar, organic eggs, etc. goes against this philosophy. And beyond that, I'm certain the taste would be different.

Pastries, desserts, sweets, are generally a bit expensive even non-organic. Most usually have the bulk of the ingredients on hand for the most part. Probably choose to ignore the overall cost. I could make any number of organic deserts with what i have including the SmittenKitchen recipe. Or a creme brûlée. For 4-6 maybe. Not enough eggs for a large gathering.

smittenKitchen Babka

Yield: 2 loaf-sized chocolate babkas

Dough
4 1/4 cups (530 grams) all-purpose flour, plus extra for dusting
1/2 cup (100 grams) granulated sugar
2 teaspoons instant yeast
Grated zest of 1 small lemon or half an orange (our preference)
3 large eggs
1/2 cup water (cold is fine) and up to 1 to 2 tablespoons extra, if needed
3/4 teaspoon fine sea or table salt
2/3 cup unsalted butter (150 grams or 5.3 ounces) at room temperature
Sunflower or other neutral oil, for greasing

Filling
4 1/2 ounces (130 grams) dark chocolate (or approximately 3/4 cup chocolate chips)
1/2 cup (120 grams) unsalted butter, cold is fine
Scant 1/2 cup (50 grams) powdered sugar
1/3 cup (30 grams) cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon [optional]

Syrup
1/3 cup water
6 tablespoons (75 grams) granulated sugar