Baklava Babka
For the past 5 or 6 years, my friend Danielle has been making me the cutest Christmas gift: a calendar with pictures of all the treats I made throughout the year. It makes me so happy, and now that I have a cubicle again, it has a prominent spot on my wall. When I turned the page to April 2019, there was a big photo of my favourite baking project of last year: Chocolate Babka. It reminded me that I always meant to follow it up with the Baklava Babka on Smitten Kitchen, and I immediately selected that as my Yeaster baking project for Good Friday.


I found this babka dough easier to make than last year’s, primarily because I didn’t have to use all my muscles to blend in 2/3 cup amount of softened butter by hand. Instead this dough uses melted butter, which just gets whisked in at the beginning, so it was super easy.

The filling is where the baklava components come into play. There’s a cinnamon sugar mixture that gets topped with chopped pistachios and walnuts. You can also add some optional flavours here such as rose water or orange blossom water, plus cardamom or cloves, but I left all of that out.

First Rise
The shaping part went somewhat smoothly, except that once I sliced my babka logs in half lengthwise, the layers immediately started to spread apart. I had to work quickly to wrap and shape them and get them into the pan. I’m also noticing now that Deb had many more layers to her babka, so I think I should have rolled the dough out to be be much more thin, but I don’t think it’s that big of a deal.

Once the babkas are baked, they get saturated with honey syrup, which doesn’t make the loaves soggy, just gives them that syrupy baklava flavour and texture.

This babka is a labour of love, but worth every minute. It’s sweet, syrupy and nutty, plus has all the warm spicy goodness of the best cinnamon roll. I might give a slight edge to the Chocolate Babka, just because I’ll always pick chocolate over everything, but this Baklava Babka is right up there with it.

Babka Slice
One note: my instructions below are for making the babka in two loaf pans. You can also make it in a tube pan; click the link below for instructions on how to do that.


Baklava Babka

Source: Smitten Kitchen

Ingredients

Dough

  • 6 tbsp butter, melted and cooled
  • 3/4 cup milk (I used 2%)
  • 3 1/2 tsp instant yeast
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 1/2 tsp vanilla
  • 4 1/2 cups flour
  • 1 tsp salt

Filling

  • 2/3 cup sugar
  • 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
  • 2 cups nuts (SK used 1 cup pistachios + 1 cup walnuts, so I did too), toasted
  • big pinch salt
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 5 tbsp butter, melted

Honey Syrup

  • 3/4 cup honey
  • 3/4 cup water
  • big pinch salt

Directions

  1. For the dough, mix the butter, milk, yeast, sugar, eggs and vanilla until smooth. Add the flour and salt and stir until the dough comes together. Dump dough onto a floured counter and knead for about 5 minutes. Dough will be sticky, but try to add as little flour as possible so it doesn’t get tough. Divide the dough in half and form into balls.
  2. Coat two separate medium sized bowls with very thin coatings of vegetable oil. Place one dough ball in each bowl and turn it to coat in oil. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place for two hours.
  3. For the filling, mix together the sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl. Add the nuts, salt and vanilla to a food processor and pulse until the nuts are finely chopped. Set aside 1/4 cup of this mixture.
  4. When the dough is almost done the first rise, get the pans ready. Line the bottom of two loaf pans with parchment paper and then grease the sides and bottom with nonstick spray or butter.
  5. Remove one of the dough balls from the fridge and place on a floured surface. Roll out dough to a 10″ x 10″ square (or as close as you can get, doesn’t have to be perfect).  Dab water along the far edge of the dough, about 1/2″,  then brush the rest of the dough with melted butter. Sprinkle half of the cinnamon sugar filling over the dough, then cover with half of the nut mixture.
  6. Starting at the side closest to you, roll the dough up into a tight log, and seal the damp end. Rest seam side down on a plate/cutting board/baking sheet that can fit in your freezer, and place in the freezer while you repeat this step with the other dough ball.
  7. When the second log is prepared, add that to the freezer, and remove the chilled log. Trim 1/2″ from each end, then gently cut the log in half lengthwise, and place the two halves next to each other, cut sides up. Pinch the top of the halves together, then twist the halves around each other, trying to leave the cut sides facing out as best you can. Place in one of the loaf pans and set aside. Repeat with other dough.
  8. Cover loaf pans with plastic wrap, and let rise again for 45 minutes.
  9. Heat oven to 350° and when loaves are done their second rise, sprinkle with the reserved nut mixture, then bake for 30-40 minutes or until the tops are a deep, golden brown.
  10. While babkas are baking, make the simple syrup by stirring the honey, water and salt sugar together in a small saucepan, bringing to a boil over high heat. Lower the heat to medium and let the mixture simmer and reduce by about 1/3 (SK says to just eyeball it).
  11. As soon as the babkas come out of the oven, brush the tops with the honey syrup. Wait until one coat sinks in, then add another coat, repeating until the simple syrup is gone. (This seems crazy, but just trust the recipe. It does NOT make the bread soggy). Let cool for 30-45 minutes in the pans, then remove loaves to finish cooling on a backing rack. Slice and serve!