Polish Babka (Easter Yeast Babka with Raisins)
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Loading... - Karen Summers
- 29 Mar 2022
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Polish Easter Babka (Babka Wielkanocna) is a rich yeast-based bundt cake filled with raisins and glazed with icing. It’s delicate, moist, and rich, almost like a brioche. This sweet raisin bread would be great for any occasion – it’s absolutely amazing!
Polish Easter Babka
Polish Easter babka is a rich yeast-leaven bundt cake. The babka from my recipe comes out delicate, moist, and not dry, almost like a brioche – it’s great on its own and your first instinct will NOT be to slather it with butter, which often happens with yeast sweet bread recipes. It is similar to Italian panettone.
Babka is the general term for a bundt cake in Poland. Any type of cake baked in a bundt cake pan would be babka, for example, chocolate pound cake baked in a bundt pan would be chocolate babka (babka czekoladowa) and you should not confuse it with popular in the US Jewish chocolate babka which would be called ‘strucla’ in Poland. A bit confusing, I know!
To add a little bit to the confusion, Easter babka does not have to be yeast-based. This yeast sweet bread with raisins is definitely popular in Poland, especially for Easter, but many people make different kinds of babka for Easter. For example, in my family, my grandma always makes lemon babka (babka cytrynowa) for Easter which is basically just lemon pound cake. In conclusion, bundt cake-shaped baked goods are especially popular for Easter in Poland and are a part of the Easter basket that is taken to church for Easter by the Catholic people.
This particular type of babka is often called Easter babka (babka Wielkanocna) or yeast raisin babka (babka drożdżowa z rodzynkami).
This sweet raisin babka is really amazing and would be great for any occasion, all year round.
Ingredients
Here’s what you need to make Polish yeast raisin babka:
This is a basic yeast dough recipe. This particular recipe is really rich, almost as rich as brioche, I’ve added lots of butter and lots of raisins. If you don’t like raisins you could omit them but I think they add so much flavor and moisture to this dessert, it would really be a shame.
Rum or brandy is optional. They add some flavor to the raisins but you could soak them in just boiling water or for a longer period of time in orange juice. You could also soak them in just rum for a longer period of time. Boiling water is used to speed up softening raisins. Don’t omit this step or the raisins will soak up the moisture from the babka.
Yeast raisin babka is known for using many egg yolks. Many recipes call for even 5-8 egg yolks. I think 2 egg yolks and 2 eggs are really enough. Instead, I’ve added more butter!
In Poland, fresh yeast is most often used, they can be found in every grocery store. Yeast dough made with fresh yeast rises faster but the yeast flavor is more pronounced. I used instant yeast for this recipe.
How to measure flour
In the recipe card at the end of the post, I provided all the possible measurements for Polish babka – by volume and by weight. I’m always using a kitchen scale to make this recipe (and generally to develop the recipes for my website). If you’re weighing your ingredients on a scale your results will be very consistent and the same as mine. It’s really easier, quicker (you don’t have to clean all the measuring cups), and a kitchen scale is super cheap!
You can measure out all the ingredients for this recipe using measuring cups but I would recommend weighing flour.
Measuring the flour with measuring cups is unfortunately very inaccurate. 1 US cup of flour can weigh from 120g-140g, depending on how you’re filling your cup (1 US cup is 240ml, a European cup is 250ml). 20g is a little over 2 tablespoons of flour, so when this recipe calls for over 5 cups of flour, you could have added 10 tablespoons more flour which is over 1/2 cup! This will result in a dry babka. Check the consistency of the dough – it should be soft and rather loose, it should not be dense.
If you’d like to measure flour with cups you need to:
§ Fluff the flour by stirring it in the bag/flour container with a spoon.
§ Spoon the flour and sprinkle it into your measuring cup.
§ Sweep off the excess flour with the back of a knife.
How to make Polish babka step by step
STEP 1: Add the raisins and rum into a small bowl. Stir the raising with rum for a minute so they absorb as much rum as possible then pour boiling water over to cover the raisins. Set aside.
STEP 2: Add 8 tablespoons butter (115g) into a medium saucepan and heat until melted. Add the cold milk, vanilla extract, and 1/4 cup of sugar (50g, you can just eyeball it), stir until combined, then take the pot off the heat. Pour the mixture into a medium bowl, make sure the temperature of the liquid is between 100-110°F (38-43°C) (pleasantly warm to your finger, it can’t be too hot) then stir in the yeast (adding yeast into a warm liquid will make them rise faster). After about 1-2 minutes you should see the yeast is starting to ‘bloom’ (will be frothy/foamy).
STEP 3: Add the eggs, egg yolks, lemon and orange zest, and the remaining sugar (1/2 cup=100g) into a large bowl.
STEP 4: Whisk until well combined. Read More…
