Chocolate Babka

It is dark and raining out, Hanukah has ended, yet I still want to bake goodies to give away.  I recalled a fantastic babka recipe that appeared in Gourmet magazine years ago. Rather than a bready sparsely filled loaf, or crumbly dry loaf I was after the moist buttery strands of a many layered pastry rolled up with chocolate and other luscious fillings. The original recipe was in a December 2006 issue of a print Gourmet Magazine, and can be found at this site on Epicurious. ^[1] Just click on the highlighted Epicurious. ^{[2] [3]}

I altered the recipe by adding an extra half cup of flour.  It made the dough easier to work with. I made one recipe, that is two loaves with the chocolate filling and since I never bake just one batch of anything or buy just one of anything…I made more dough.  I filled one batch of dough with marzipan and dark cherry preserves.  A third batch became my cinnamon, brown sugar, pecans and raisins batch, and the very last recipe of dough I decided to fill with cinnamon, sugar, chocolate chips and pecans.   ^[4]

^{[5] [6]}For the marzipan and cherry preserves Babka, use one log of the Odense marzipan.  Roll it out into a long thin rectangle.  First butter your rolled out dough, then spread 1/2 cup of Hero brand cherry preserves and lastly, tear the thinly rolled marzipan rectangle into irregular pieces to randomly scatter over the surface of the rectangle of Babka dough.  Roll up the log and follow the directions as for the chocolate Babka. ^{[7] [8] [9] [10] [11]}