There are only few desserts I simply cannot resist – cinnamon babka is one of them. When I make cinnamon babka at home I just know I have to “get rid” of it and make it go away ASAP unless I want to find myself eating a whole babka alone.
This vegan cinnamon babka is so fragrant, soft, delicious and melts-in-your-mouth. It is the perfect cake for weekends and whenever you want to make something a little more sophisticated than regular cinnamon cake. This vegan cinnamon babka contains no eggs and is nondairy, so that really EVERYONE can enjoy it.
Photo: Natalie Levin
Vegan Cinnamon Babka with Pecans
Two 18 cm round cake pans
For the dough:
500 grams all-purpose flour
10 grams active dried yeast
80 ml. vegetable oil
75 grams sugar
120 grams applesauce
120 ml. water
Pinch of salt
1 tsp. vanilla extract
For cinnamon and pecan filling:
75 grams coconut oil
200 grams dark brown sugar
1 heaping tablespoon ground cinnamon
100 grams chopped pecans
For the syrup:
100 grams sugar
125 ml. water
Preparation:
- Make the dough: in a bowl of a mixer with a dough hook put flour, yeast, oil, sugar, applesauce, water, salt and vanilla and knead for 10-12 minutes until the dough is smooth and flexible.
- Transfer the dough on a lightly floured work surface, knead 1-2 more minutes with your hands and form a ball shape.
- Place the ball of dough in a lightly floured bowl, cover and let rise at room temperature for about an hour or until the dough doubles in volume.
- Cinnamon and Pecan filling: melt the coconut oil and mix with sugar and cinnamon.
- Refrigerate for about 10 minutes until you get spreadable texture.
- Divide the dough into 2 equal parts.
- On a floured surface, roll each part into a 4-5 mm thick rectangle and spread half of the filling.
- Sprinkle half of the pecans and roll tight.
- Cut to rolls and place spaced in a pan.
- Repeat with the second part of the dough and the remaining filling and pecans.
- Cover the cakes with a towel and let rise for 30-60 minutes or until they almost doubled their volume.
- Preheat oven to 170c degrees.
- Bake the cakes for 25-35 minutes or until they are golden and set.
- Syrup: in a small pot put sugar and water and heat to a boil. Cook for 2-3 minutes after boiling and remove from heat.
- Brush the cakes generously with syrup, cool slightly and serve at room temperature.
Notes:
- You can fill the cake with any other filling you like.
- Instead of two small round cakes, you can one 28 cm round pan.
- Instead of applesauce you can also use the same amount of mashed banana.
- You can use any kind of nut you like instead of pecans.
- It is important to brush the cakes with syrup generously after baking.
- Cakes are at their best on the day of preparation, but if you want to keep them for a longer time it can be frozen for up to a month.
Photo: Natalie Levin