Frequently asked questions
What dough is babka made of?
Traditional babka is made from a sweet yeasted dough enriched with eggs and some kind of fat. For this recipe, that fat is pure butter, which puts it in the brioche category. Other loaves use oil instead, much like challah. Both butter and oil produce a soft, silky dough that's easy to roll out and shape, yielding moist, golden babka.
What time of day do you eat babka?
It is with great pleasure that we can say there's no wrong time to eat babka! This chocolate loaf is especially decadent, making it particularly well-suited for dessert, but if you're feeling fancy in the A.M. hours, it goes great with a cup of coffee.
Note from the Food & Wine Test Kitchen
With two types of chocolate in both the filling and the glaze, baker Melissa Weller's babka cake is a chocolate lover's dream come true. Using a combination of bittersweet and milk chocolate ensures a treat that's both creamy and assertively chocolate-flavored, not unlike the dark milk chocolate bars that have become popular offerings from craft chocolate makers. Thankfully this chocolate babka recipe yields a couple of loaves, so sharing is a little easier.
