Bake: Sad Girl Nutella Babka

A recipe that is cheaper than SSRIs (but take your meds too!)

Sep 24, 2023

Such a bad week was had over here that I didn’t seem to have two scraps of dopamine to rub together. Every day I take four different pills – three in the morning and one at night. The nighttime one is an antipsychotic that, on the face of it, seems like a pretty intense-sounding thing but practically-speaking it is best that I stay NOT psychotic so I just take it and figure it’s best not to dwell on labels. The morning meds buffet is just some garden variety antidepressants and mood-stabilisers, delicious with coffee and free-floating dread. Some days I take them and think: are these even doing anything? Especially on weeks like these when the mental illness I try so hard to contain, leaks out and affects the people I love. But then I have to admit that without them, I would no doubt be worse. As someone who has, at different times in the past, ‘made the plan’, I of all people know how important it is to take your meds.

The dread washed in every morning this week just as I woke up. I’d spend a couple of sleepy seconds trying to locate the source of the dread – you know that moment before the events pull into focus and remind you of what’s happened? That’s the feeling I woke up with every morning this week. I had disappointing work news, tricky parenting stuff and had catastrophically fucked up with my friend and by Tuesday, I had cried in the bathroom, I’d cried while driving my car and I’d cried when the woman in the stationary shop said I looked nice. I abandoned eating in favour of smoking – which is something terrible and delicious that I do when I am stressed. I only consumed water in the form of coffee or Diet Coke just as nature intended.

Things were going great – top tier unravelling! – when I decided I needed to do something healing. Baking seemed like a wholesome, grounding activity. When I had a spell in a psychiatric hospital (and, to be clear, this bad week was absolutely not remotely ‘psychiatric hospital bad’) there were different occupational therapy classes offered, there was one called Zen Doodle where we all copied a big doodle the teacher made on a whiteboard, I realise this might sound odd but it was hands down one of the most relaxing hours of my life.

Other OT classes included gardening and art but one of the ones I didn’t attend was baking. The other patients would bring back cupcakes and scones and I would gladly eat them but I never signed up to do it myself. I just didn’t really associate cooking or baking with being particularly relaxed. I worked as a chef all through my 20s so making food had been my day job. I loved being in professional kitchens for the frenetic, pulse-thumping ballet of service not for mindfulness. Even after I stopped cooking professionally, I was still churning meals out as dictated by the demands of tyrannical pricks only this time the tyrannical pricks weren’t the customers but my children. Now I cook everyday for a family of five and even though it’s hardly an army, it’s still a five aside football team and sometimes the monotony and volume reminds me of my old days in restaurants. Obviously my kids don’t really eat anything but social norms demand that I supply them with food to reject at regular intervals throughout the day. I make endless plates of banana toast and plain pasta and rice and chicken. I do a production line of packed lunches in the morning in the middle of breakfast service. I spend a small additional mortgage on berries every week – children have a knack for identifying the most bougie, expensive things and glomming onto them. And as fresh berries are the only non-beige food they’ll eat, they pretty much have me hog-tied on the matter.

Usually if I’m baking, I’m making them cake. And it’s the same cake over and over, the only one they’ll eat: a perfectly serviceable, if not very exciting, chocolate cake.

This week however I said “fuck those guys” (yes they are aged 9, 6 and 3, what’s your point) and decided to do some baking just for me. I decided Sad Girl Babka had a ring to it. Plus just the word ‘babka’ is comforting somehow. A babka is a sweet braided bread originally made by Jewish communities in Poland and Ukraine before becoming ubiquitous all over the world particularly in New York. It is prepared with a yeast-leavened dough that is rolled out and spread with a filling such as chocolate, cinnamon, fruit, or cheese, then rolled up and braided before baking. Unsurprisingly Nutella is not strictly a traditional babka filling but as I, a total shiksa, already have no business making babka I figured I’d lean all the way into taking the piss here.

Babka first arrived into my life via the classic Seinfeld episode, ‘the Dinner Party’, a large portion of which is spent debating whether or not cinnamon babka is the ‘lesser babka’.

When he saw that episode, my dad became fixated on tracking down a babka which, in 90s Dublin, was not as easy as you’d think. A pilgrimage was made to the famous Jewish bakery, the Bretzel on Lennox St (Sidenote: funnily enough I’d later chef in a restaurant next door) and a babka was procured. It was fuckin delish. Many years later, I married a nice Jewish boy and it is my eternal regret that we didn’t have babka for our wedding cake.

So on this dreary week, I decided to self-soothe by making a babka. Oh the follies of dumb mortals! The babka did not soothe me, it bloody broke my heart for most of the week as I battled with old yeast (I persisted in using it despite it being from 2021) and chilly conditions in my house (not conducive to proving dough). I even cranked the heating in a bid to coax a rise out of the dough – and if you’re Irish you KNOW it’s serious when you’re putting the heating on in September (my husband was out of the country but even at a great distance I’m pretty sure he could sense this outrageous move).

In short, I made this three times so you don’t have to! I ironed out the kinks in the recipe over the course of four days, forcing myself to devour two definitely ‘lesser babkas’ before finally nailing it on the third try. Maybe there’s some clunky metaphor in this, maybe it did soothe me. In working through the babka trauma, I did come through the week. The feelings eased. I even drank a glass of straight water on Friday. Result! So if you’re having a meh week, I prescribe having a babka in the kitchen – it’s life enhancing. You can make it and then freeze individual slices to take out as you need them, just pop them on low in the toaster to revive them.

In the end, the game changer with the babka was buying a new pack of yeast (duh) and proving the dough in the oven something that I’d never tried before but worked really well. I set the oven to 25°C and it did the job nicely. Some ovens may not go this low but you could probably do it at 30° and prop the oven door open. Or find a nice warm spot, if such a thing exists in your home. You can make this dough in a standing mixer with a dough hook but you absolutely don’t need a mixer, I made it by hand to show you it can be done! Watch my cookalong video below for my extremely sad girl commentary and a full rundown of the process. By the way, if you watch my videos let me know what you think in the comments?!

Nutella Babka

Makes 1 loaf

400g flour (plus extra for dusting)

100g sugar

5g dried yeast

Pinch of salt

2 eggs

75g butter (room temperature)

100ml warm water

4 HUGE tbsps of Nutella

For the syrup:

50g sugar

60ml water

Place the flour, sugar, salt and yeast in a bowl and swish to combine. Add the eggs one at a time and rub them into the dry ingredients, then add the water and bring it into a dough. Next knead in the butter a chunk at a time (about a tablespoon each go). Allowing each bit to incorporate before adding the next. If the dough is a bit sticky, add a bit more flour (a tablespoon will probably do) then turn out onto a floured surface and knead for ten minutes (or the length of three sad songs!).

Place the dough in an oiled bowl, cover with cling film and leave in a warm place to rise for two hours (see oven temp above if you need). It’ll double in size (hopefully;)).

When it’s risen, turn it out onto a floured surface. Roll it out to a rectangle roughly 36cm x 26cm and spread over the nutella.

Then take the long edge and roll it into a sausage. Using a sharp knife, split it from just short of the top, twist the two lengths slightly up, then lay one over the other to form a twist.

Grease a bread tin then lay the sausage in (you can twist it back on itself to make it fit). Leave to rise for another hour. Preheat over to 200 and bake for 15 minutes, then lower the temperature to 150 for 20 minutes. It should sound hollow when it’s done. While it’s cooling make the syrup. Dissolve 50g of sugar in 60ml of water then boil for 2 minutes. Brush all over the babka and you are ready to go.