Pumpkin and chocolate are a delicious, but underrated combination. If more people tasted these two together, coffee shops would be changing their signature fall drink flavors to combine these two ingredients (pumpkin mocha–you heard it here first!).
This pareve babka makes a perfect breakfast bread or Shabbat dessert.
Make ahead note: If you don’t have time to bake today, try a refrigerator rise. After making the dough, rub it with a little oil and place in a resealable plastic bag. Refrigerate for up to 2 days. When you’re ready to bake, remove from the fridge, place dough in a greased bowl or on a parchment lined pan, and let come to room temperature. Then shape, fill, and bake!
Bittersweet Chocolate-Pumpkin Babka
Servings
3 Servings
Ingredients
- 1½ cups hot water at 100°F
- 4½ teaspoons yeast or 2 ¼-ounce packages yeast
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 cup extra virgin olive oil
- ⅔ cup honey
- 5 egg yolks
- 2 whole eggs
- 6 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 pound bittersweet chocolate chopped
- ½ cup brown sugar
- 3 tablespoons cinnamon
- 2 teaspoons kosher salt
- 1 cup pumpkin puree
- ½ cup confectioner’s sugar
- 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
- Pinch of ground cloves
- ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- Pinch of kosher salt
- 1½ cups confectioner’s sugar
- 3 tablespoons water
- 1 tablespoon cinnamon
- Pinch of sea salt
Instructions
- Sponge:
- Combine water, yeast, and flour in the bowl of a stand mixer. Cover with a towel and let stand for 30 minutes, until the surface looks like a sponge.
- Dough:
- To the sponge add oil, honey, egg yolks, whole eggs, and flour and mix to combine.
- Add flour, a little at a time until dough is not sticky, but still has a bit of tackiness to it.
- Transfer dough to a lightly greased bowl. Cover and rise for 2 hours. Or lightly oil the dough and transfer to a resealable bag and store overnight in the refrigerator (see note under photo).
- Chocolate Filling:
- In a medium bowl, stir together chocolate, sugar, cinnamon, and salt together. Set aside.
- Pumpkin Filling:
- In a medium bowl, stir together pumpkin, sugar, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and salt together. Set aside.
- Shaping and Filling:
- Lightly grease 3 loaf pans with oil. Separate risen dough into 3 equal pieces. If using refrigerated dough, let it come to room temperature before shaping.
- With a rolling pin, roll one piece of dough into a 16-inch square. Sprinkle 1/3rd chocolate filling on half of the square. Shmear the other half with 1/3 of pumpkin filling. Roll dough up tightly into a rope, being sure to seal the ends.
- Slice rope lengthwise and wrap the halves around each other at least 6 times. Fold rope in half and place in a greased loaf pan. Repeat with remaining dough. Allow babkas to rise for 1 hour.
- Preheat oven to 350°F.
- Bake babkas at 350°F for 40 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through. Remove from the oven and cool in the pan on a rack for 10 minutes. Remove babkas from the pans and cool on the rack for 10 minutes more. Drizzle with cinnamon glaze, slice, and serve warm.
- Cinnamon Glaze:
- Whisk together sugar, water, cinnamon, and salt. Drizzle over cooled babkas.
I made this today.
I found it very frustrating.
It wasn’t until I watched the video that I found out that the Chocolate filling needs to be put through a food processor.
After I rolled and cut it in half, the wet, loose pumpkin filling just ran out and the dry powdery chocolate filling fell out.
I had to doctor both fillings. I added oil to the chocolate one to make it more like a paste. I added a mix of more powdered sugar, corn starch and flour to the pumpkin filling to thicken it so it didn’t run everywhere.
I also could not twist the 2 halves more than 4 times.
It’s not clear. After you spread the filling, which direction do you roll it up? Parallel or perpendicular to the division of fillings?
It shouldn’t matter which way you roll after you spread the filling, but you can watch the video to get more insight.
Thanks, Finally realized that there was video to watch.
Can I make this ahead a freeze it?
Sure, babka will freeze well.
This looks yummy! May I suggest an edit to your instructions? For step 2 of Shaping and Filling, you should specify using only 1/3 of the chocolate filling and only 1/3 of the pumpkin filling for each loaf.
Also, while you’re making corrections: There are multiple places where you use the word “together” twice in the same sentence.
Thanks!
Hi Miriam! It was so good, the internet gobbled them up! Thanks for the heads up. They are up now. Happy baking!
Um, where are the ingredients? This sounds delicious, but I can’t try it without an ingredient list.