A Babka is a spongy, brioche-like yeast pastry popular in Eastern Europe. East European immigrants brought it along with them to Israel where it can be found in practically any neighborhood bakery, usually filled with cinnamon and sugar or chocolate. I love this cake since it combines two of my favorites: chocolate and pastry Over the years I tried many recipes. My all-time favorite recipe – producing the best Babka I had eaten in 30 years of sampling these cake – was the one I received from my friend Sharon Heinrich, a Parisian baker and patisserie critic. I decided to veganize it and the end result is a vegan Babka just as perfect as its non-vegan sister!
Important: please use measuring cups and a scale for this recipe. Baking is scientific like, and for best results you must measure the ingredients precisely.
Ingredients for two Babkas baked in a loaf pan:
Dough:
4 cups all purpose flour (I prefer king Arthur’s organic)
2 TBS instant yeasts
1/3 cup unsweetened applesauce
3.5 oz (100 grams) Earth Balance – for better results (flavor wise) melt 2.5 oz of cocoa butter with 1 oz of canola/safflower/corn/sunflower oil
3/4 cup soy milk (or any other plant based milk)
1/3 cup sugar
A pinch of salt.
Filling:
6.5 oz of Earth Balance (200 grams) – for better results (flavor wise), melt 4 oz of cocoa butter with 2 oz ofcanola/safflower/corn/sunflower oil
6 TBS good quality! cocoa powder (I like this one or this one)
2 cups of sugar – take out of the two cups of sugar 2 TBS!
2 oz (60 grams) of good quality dark chocolate 70% and up. – broken to small pieces
3 heaping TBS, good quality nut butter or even better, chocolate nut butter like this AMAZING-MUCH-BETTER-THAN-NUTELLA-NUT-BUTTER
2 TBS unsweetened applesauce
2 TBS Swedish pearl sugar (optional) – for a cool crunchy sugary topping
Instructions:
Making the filling:
We will start with making the filling for the cake, we would like it to harden a bit before we use it to a cream that is easy to spread. When you make it, it will be in a more liquidish state.
1. Melt the Earth Balance (or the cocoa butter and the oil) in a pot in low heat. Add the chocolate until it starts to melt. Remove from the heat source and mix with a whisk until all the chocolate had melted.
2. Add the rest of the filling ingredients and mix with a whisk. Set asidein a cool place to harden.
Making the dough:
1. Melt the Earth Balance (or cocoa butter and oil) in a small pot. Remove from heat and add the soy milk. Mix well and set aside.
2. In a mixer with a dough hook add the flour, yeast, sugar and apple sauce and mix for 30 seconds.
3. Add the milk and butter mix and the pinch of salt to the mixer and mix well in low speed for about 5 minutes until a very soft dough is formulating.
4. Shape the dough into a ball, brush with oil, place in a large bowl, cover the bowl with a plastic bug and set aside for about one hour until the dough has doubled in volume.
Meanwhile, if you would like to keep you pans clean and nice and make sure that the cake will not stick to the pan, cover the pan with some baking parchment paper. Alternatively, you can grease the pans with Earth Balance.
Shaping the cake:
5. Split the dough in half!
6. Start with one half and flatten it using a rolling pin as thin as you can (about 2 mm thickness)
7. Spread half of the filling on top of the squared dough using a spatula and roll into acylinder shape.
8. Using a sharp knife or abaker’s bench knife cut in half length wise so you will get two parts:
9. Twist the parts around each other and place in the pan, cover with a plastic bag and let it rise for about 45 minutes.
Repeat steps 6-9 with the other half of the dough.
10. If you have filling leftovers, you can brush it on top of the cake and sprinkle the Swedish sugar pearls if you have it.
11. Preheat oven to 360F (180C).
12. After about 45 minutes of proofing, it is time to put the cakes into the oven. Bake for about 40 minutes until and stiff to touch.
13. Take out of the oven, put on a rack and cover with a clean kitchen towel. You can eat it after one hour 🙂
Printable recipe:
5.0 from 3 reviews
Vegan Chocolate Babka recipe
Prep time
Cook time
Total time
Important: please use measuring cups and a scale for this recipe. Baking is like science and for the best results you have to measure the ingredients precisely. Ingredients for two Babka baked in a loaf pan:
Ingredients
Dough:
- 4 cups all purpose flour (I prefer king Arthur's organic)
- 2 TBS instant yeasts
- ⅓ cup unsweetened applesauce
- 3.5 oz (100 grams) Earth Balance - for better results (flavor wise) melt 2.5 oz of cocoa butter with 1 oz of canola/safflower/corn/sunflower oil
- ¾ cup soy milk (or any other plant based milk)
- ⅓ cup sugar
- A pinch of salt.
Filling:
- 6.5 oz of Earth Balance (200 grams) - for better results (flavor wise), melt 4 oz of cocoa butter with 2 oz of canola/safflower/corn/sunflower oil
- 6 TBS good quality! cocoa powder (I like this one or this one)
- 2 cups of sugar - take out of the two cups of sugar 2 TBS!
- 2 oz (60 grams) of good quality dark chocolate 70% and up. - broken to small pieces
- 3 heaping TBS, good quality nut butter or even better, chocolate nut butter like this AMAZING-MUCH-BETTER-THAN-NUTELLA-NUT-BUTTER
- 2 TBS unsweetened applesauce
- 2 TBS Swedish pearl sugar (optional) - for a cool crunchy sugary topping
Instructions
Making the filling:
We will start with making the filling for the cake, we would like it to harden a bit before we use it to a cream that is easy to spread. When you make it, it will be in a more liquidish state.
- Melt the Earth Balance (or the cocoa butter and the oil) in a pot in low heat. Add the chocolate until it starts to melt. Remove from the heat source and mix with a whisk until all the chocolate had melted.
- Add the rest of the filling ingredients and mix with a whisk. Set aside in a cool place to harden.
Making the dough and shaping the cake:
- Melt the Earth Balance (or cocoa butter and oil) in a small pot. Remove from heat and add the soy milk. Mix well and set aside.
- In a mixer with a dough hook add the flour, yeasts, sugar and apple sauce and mix for 30 seconds.
- Add the milk and butter mix and the pinch of salt to the mixer and mix well in low speed for about 5 minutes until a very soft dough is formulating.
- Shape the dough into a ball, brush with oil, place in a large bowl, cover the bowl with a plastic bug and set aside for about one hour until the dough has doubled in volume.
- Meanwhile, if you would like to keep you pans clean and nice and make sure that the cake will not stick to the pan, cover the pan with some baking parchment paper. Alternatively, you can grease the pans with Earth Balance.
- Split the dough in half!
- Start with one half and flatten it using a rolling pin as thin as you can (about 2 mm thickness)
- Spread half of the filling on top of the squared dough using a spatula and roll into a cylinder shape.
- Using a sharp knife or a baker's bench knife cut in half length wise so you will get two parts :
- Twist the parts around each other and place in the pan, cover with a plastic bag and let it rise for about 45 minutes.
- Repeat steps 7-10 with the other half of the dough.
- If you have filling leftovers, you can brush it on top of the cake and sprinkle the Swedish sugar pearls if you have it.
- Preheat oven to 360F (180C).
- After about 45 minutes of proofing, it is time to put the cakes into the oven. Bake for about 40 minutes until and stiff to touch.
- Take out of the oven, put on a rack and cover with a clean kitchen towel. You can eat it after one hour 🙂
