The Best Chocolate Babka Recipes to Make for the Hanukkah Season

I love that babka translates to “little grandmother” in Yiddish, because the sweet braided bread, with swirls of filling reminiscent of Bubbe's pleated skirt, is always so comforting as such.

My grandmother didn't teach me how to fill and braid this beloved pastry. My passion for babka emerged while shopping the aisles at Zabar's on New York's Upper West Side when I was in college. Buying a babka, ordering smoked salmon at the counter, and taking home various pickled provisions made me feel connected to previous generations of my Ashkenazi family who had landed first in Brooklyn and then Manhattan and perused the same shelves, searching for familiar foods from home. .

The history of Babka dates back to 19th century Eastern Europe, when it was made with leftover challah dough and the fillings were traditionally made with walnuts or poppy seeds. But chocolate babka is considered an American Jewish innovation. I embraced the babka innovation by experimenting with breads of many flavors: apple butter babka, Scandinavian cardamom sweets, and even savory babkas. I am not beholden to tradition but believe in evolution!

Babka can be divisive. Many points are hotly debated: which filling you prefer, whether you use butter or oil to keep it kosher, whether it's bread or cake, whether you should glaze it (or not), and even what time of day it should be enjoyed. It's not a breakfast pastry due to its decadence, but it's not a dessert either.

I think this kvetching is what makes babka so versatile and full of potential, regardless of whether it is defined as this or that. Babka in all its forms can be, well… better. I like to think of it like any other yeasted pastry, like cinnamon rolls or Danish rolls, where the filling can be seasonal. And if left on the counter, it can be enjoyed all day long.

Babka can be a chore too, but when you break it down into a formula (dough, filling, glaze/syrup) and you've mastered the technique (confidence is key!), it all comes down to patience, with a more than worthwhile reward. . Babka, after all, is spectacular.

Think of making babka as a formula: brioche dough + filling + glaze. Chocolate glaze is poured over a chocolate-hazelnut babka in the LA Times kitchen.

(Catherine Dzilenski/for The Times)

These three versions of chocolate babka are both modern and nostalgic. With a deep and fun flavor, they are inspired by Jewish classics. I found that chocolate babka can be a bit monotonous and cloyingly sweet. But each of these recipes uses complementary ingredients that will enhance the flavor and provide necessary balance.

My chocolate babka gelt is filled with a dark chocolate and hazelnut cream and sprinkled with golden jewels of crushed amaretti cookies. It's nutty and rich, and the cookies add a fun, unexpected crunch. It's then enrobed in a shiny espresso chocolate glaze, with coffee and vanilla being two of the ingredients that bring out that maximum chocolate flavor. Cutting this babka is guaranteed to be much more exciting than peeling those dusty gold coins at Hanukkah.

Next we have a black and white babka inspired by the cookie of the same name and Jewish deli classics like egg creams and milkshakes. This babka features a fudge filling, where malt powder adds a toasty, almost caramel flavor to both the bittersweet chocolate filling and vanilla glaze.

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1. Spread the chocolate filling over the rolled out brioche dough. 2. Roll the filled brioche dough into a cylinder and chill in the refrigerator. 3. Cut the filled dough cylinder in half vertically. 4. “Braid” the babka by twisting the two halves together. (Catherine Dzilenski/for The Times)

Dr. Brown's black cherry soda inspires a third version of babka, perhaps the most unusual of the bunch. The cocoa and black sesame filling is studded with dollops of cherry jam, making it earthy and tart. Before baking, you'll add crumbled cocoa for even more chocolate flavor/texture and finish with a kirsch syrup that will absorb into the babka, keeping it moist and with the Black Forest flavor profile the soda is known for.

Almost every babka recipe I've seen over the years calls for two loaves. And these are no different. Maybe it's because of the time invested that one babka just isn't enough, but I like to think that part of the tradition of making babka is making one for yourself and giving the other as a gift.

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Writer Emily Alben, in the LA Times kitchen.

(Catherine Dzilenski/for The Times)