There are lots of chocolate babbka recipes out there and choosing one you can put your faith in can be difficult. I have been there, done that and got the T-shirt folks! Having read at least 50 babbka recipes and compared and contrasted ingredients, quantities and method, I have come up with a recipe that I think really hits the mark bang on. I haven’t reinvented the wheel with this recipe, it’s just the one I make, and it’s delicious! For something a little avant garde and new, check out my miso caramel pecan babbka. That one really is a brand new world of deliciousness!

But back to the babbka eating world’s firm favourite. Chocolate babbka.

The dough is pretty much taken straight from Yotam Ottolengi’s book Jerusalem, with a few minor tweaks.

The filling however is all me. Cue Julie Andrews, these are a few of my favourite things. Actually, this filling comprises quite a lot of my favourite things! Chocolate, hazelnut, and a hum of espresso. Lavely.

This recipe makes two small babbkas which sounds like a lot, but trust me they disappear alarmingly quickly. It also means that you can throw one to the pride of ravenous lions that is your household, whilst presenting one intact as a gift, or serving it to guests. A whole cooked babbka also freezes well, so you can always go the ‘one to eat, and one to freeze’ route. Personally I have never found that necessary as once baked I find a way to make this babbka appear from its tin multiple times a day! Breakfast? Why not! Dessert after lunch? Certainly. With a cup of tea around 4pm? Would be rude not to! And then my personal favourite…the “it’s been precisely 20 minutes since dinner and I really ought not to go to bed on an empty stomach!”.

There is even better news as far as this babbka is concerned. This babbka, once a few days old, makes the most incredible French toast (eggy bread) in the entire universe. I have served it with caramelised bananas and creme fraiche, and it was really a slice of heaven. This babbka recipe is worth making just to make into French toast. 

Check out my post on this wondrous chocolate babbka French toast to get the recipe.

Now enough babbka babble! Let’s get to making. Be a doll and bake this babbka for your bubbah. She’s probably amazing and deserves it!

Quick notes:

1) You can use all dark chocolate chips if you prefer, but I quite like the mix of light and dark.
2) You can leave out the star anise if you don’t have it or you’re not a fan.

3) If you don’t have espresso powder, get it. It is one of the ingredients I find myself using the most when baking. Add it to meringue, marshmallows, whipped cream, buttercream, smoothies, porridge…the list goes on and on. If you have a good coffee extract like Trablit that will work too! Even if you don’t like coffee I urge you not to miss this out. The babbka doesn’t taste of coffee when baked, the coffee simply melds with the cocoa and produces a very aromatic well rounded flavour profile.

4) To store your babbkas, place in air tight cake tins in a cool dark place. Don’t put them in the fridge or they will be dry and sad.