It's officially winter which means it’s time to indulge in some comforting foods. This delicious chocolate babka is the best cake to enjoy with a hot drink on a cold day. It’s the dessert that my family loves the most and the best part is that it's parve (non-dairy).
Usually, babka is made with butter and milk and the dough is rich with flavors. This pareve babka is still very rich and delicious despite the lack of dairy products. For the filling, I used non-dairy chocolate spread, if you can't find any then you can use the chocolate filling I made from scratch for my parve rugalach recipe. You can also fill your babka with other types of spreads and flavors.
This babka is sweet, soft with chocolaty gooey inside. What else can you ask for?
Often babka recipes call for brushing the cake with egg wash and adding sugar syrup after baking. I prefer to not brush my chocolate babka with egg wash and I skip the sugar syrup as well. The outcome is very good and that’s how I like it!
To shape the babka, you need to roll the dough into a rectangle. Spread the chocolate spread - try to spread and cover all of the dough, no one wants to have just dough with no chocolate. Then you make a roll of the rectangle, cut to 2, and braid the 2 strands.
For more cake recipes, check my cakes recipe index. If you are interested in a dairy babka I posted a cheese babka recipe just before Shavuot, it's so good!
Let's start making this yummy parve chocolate babka:
Parve Chocolate Babka
Ingredients
- 3½ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon (heaping) dry yeast
- ⅓ cup vegetable oil
- ¼ cup sugar
- 2 eggs
- ¾ cup water
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract / paste
For filling:
- Non-dairy chocolate spread
Instructions
- In a stand mixer bowl, place all dough ingredients and knead with the kneading hook for 5 minutes until you get a unified dough.
- Grease the bowl and make sure all the dough is greased too, cover with plastic and let the dough rest in a warm place for 2 hours.
- Divide the dough into 2 equal parts.
- Roll one part of the dough into a large rectangular leaf, about 3 to 4 mm thick.
- Spread the filling and roll the rectangle.
- Cut the roll in the middle.
- Braid the 2 strands and transfer to a greased loaf pan.
- Repeat with the second half of the dough.
- Let the braided loaves rise for one more hour.
- Set the oven to 180°C / 350°F with the fan.
- Bake the 2 loaves for 30 minutes.
- Cool at room temperature.
- Have a piece and enjoy!
