On the Chocolate Trail

This celebratory, cheesy babka belongs on a festive Shavuot table, for sure. Read my story at the Jewish Week “Exotic Celebratory Breads for Shavuot“ Adapted from Beth Hensperger’s The Bread Bible: 300 Favorite Recipes Yield: One large cake DOUGH 1 tablespoon active dry yeast Pinch sugar ¼ cup warm water (105º to 115º) ½ cup

The borscht belt must have been a babka belt. When thinking of chocolate babka, the Catskills came to my mind given the immense quantities of meichelach treats overflowing the tables there in the 1940’s-60’s. Babka must have been ingrained in the Jewish palate then, as it is now, I figured. Surprisingly, my search through several histories

Admittedly, by heritage I am more a German kugelhopf than an Eastern European babka, having eaten homemade kugelhopf at family celebrations in Los Angeles. Indeed when I mentioned my interest (obsession?) with babka to my German speaking father in LA, he looked puzzled and asked, “What’s a babka?”At one point I wrote him a note that

  Media attention, popular culture, audience questions, growing consumer awareness, and changes in the chocolate world sparked the new material in this second edition of On the Chocolate Trail. I am happy to offer up a totally new chapter, “Gods in My Chocolate,” which explores twenty-first-century controversies about deities formed from chocolate. While chocolate generally

Stories of New Yorkers and their chocolate abound so we followed the chocolate trail there. A long heritage of Brooklyn chocolate production and innovation precedes today’s bean-to-bar, artisanal, and industrial chocolate enterprises. All the way back in the late 1800s immigrants to Brooklyn succeeded in the chocolate, bakery and candy businesses. Now Brooklyn hosts Valhrona,