A chocolate babka is a coffee cake that is associated with the Eastern European Jewish tradition and is made from a doubled and twisted length of yeast dough. It is typically baked in a high loaf pan and contain a filling of cinnamon and chocolate.
The picture below is a very standard babka, but doesn't give the definition to understand why it is so good.
As you can see from the picture below, there are swirls of dough and chocolate, with bits of chocolate on the top. It is so good.
Check this one out. Now you can understand why we only ate babka for the first month of the trip.
These are the Zabar's babkas. There are so many of them in the store that your mouth just waters.
A little secret. Felice and I lived in Los Angeles for four years at the beginning of our marriage. We frequently went to the Fairfax area of LA, which is the old Jewish section. We bought many a babka there at a deli called Canter's. Canter's is close to CBS Television City and is a place where the stars come to eat and be harassed by the old Jewish waitresses. I believe that their babkas are the equal of the ones in New York City, but further, they have something that we were unable to find in NYC, a chocolate racetrack. We don't know if this is just baked at Canter's but it is so chocolaty that you can only eat half of the portion that you would of a babka. As you would surmise by the description, the cake is baked in a circle yet the insides are like a babka. On the top of the cake is chocolate and chocolate chips. There are also marascino cherries on top. To us, the chocolate racetrack is the ultimate dessert. We will keep looking in other locales, but we doubt we will find anything like this delicacy from Canter's which is pictured below.
Hopefully, that will answer the question, "What is a chocolate babka?" But you know that you will never really understand until you have a slice, so I encourage you to seek one out as soon as possible.
Gary
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