A spongy cake, with a dough similar to an Italian brioche. The juicy, soft diced apples simply melt in your mouth when they’re mixed with sugar, butter and lemon juice. For the pastry dough, we use milk, vanilla, flour, eggs, salt and sure. Then the apples are cooked in a pan over medium heat. You can even use a plum cake mold to make your apple babka, which we suggest garnishing with chopped almonds and a brushstroke of honey once cooled.
Our Recipe for Apple Babka
Golden delicious apples – with their sweet and slightly sour flavor profile – are ideal for this recipe for a light and healthy babka.
Ingredients for the Babka dough
1 whole vanilla bean
½ cup milk, at room temperature
1 teaspoon active dry yeast
1 lb flour
2 eggs
3 oz superfine caster sugar
Honey, for brushing
3 oz butter, softened
1 pinch of salt
Ingredients for the apple filling
2 oz butter
4 oz sugar
4 golden delicious apples
1 lemon
2 oz chopped almonds
Start with the babka dough
First, you’ll want to mix the vanilla beans with the milk. Add the dry yeast and let it dissolve by mixing it in with a fork. Then add the flour, eggs, sugar, salt and finally the chopped butter. Knead for about 2 minutes using a standing mixer with a dough hook until fairly smooth.
Increase the speed to medium and knead the dough for another 10 minutes. Transfer the dough into a bowl and cover it with plastic wrap. Let the dough rest for an hour and a half at room temperature. Then transfer to the fridge to rest for another hour. In the meantime, clean and peel the apples, cutting them evenly into 1cm cubes.
Then make the apple filling
Melt the butter with the sugar in a non-stick pan. Then add the apple cubes and the juice of 1 lemon. Cook over medium heat for about 10 minutes. Once ready, set the apple mixture aside and let it cool in a bowl. Then transfer the dough onto a clean work surface. Roll it out using a rolling pin to give it a rectangular shape of about 25x35 cm.
Place the cooked apples and chopped almonds on top. Start rolling the dough from the longer side. Then cut it in half lengthwise and start to weave the two halves together.
Assemble, bake and polish!
Transfer the babka into a buttered and floured plum cake mold and cover it with a cloth. Let it rise for about one hour at room temperature. After an hour, bake in a preheated oven at 340°F (170°C) for about 45 minutes. Remove the babka from the oven, let it cool and brush with honey to polish.