Chocolate, Hazelnut & Pear Babka

I read an interesting article the other day, followed closely by a post by Erin from Cloudy Kitchen, which made me think a little about the way we consume content – both generally and about food. The gist is that it is has gotten faster and faster. We expect things to happen quickly and in abundance. We scroll past hundreds of photographs on Instagram or Pinterest in a day, expecting to hop straight over to a well-tested recipe in a few seconds. We scan a pages of news briefly on our many open laptop tabs, before skipping onto a new email, then maybe a text, back to the news and then back to work. Distraction arrives swiftly and easily. What does this mean for food content and food blogging?

It used to be more commonplace to sit down and have coffee over a lengthy magazine or newspaper article, accompanied by a recipe that you might tear out and keep in a folder, crumpled and stained. Or to page through a prized cookbook in the evening, earmarking recipes to attempt. Then blogs arrived, and we started to consume online blog posts as well as paper material – but the writing was still of importance. It seems as though this has shifted again in the last few years towards “Instagram content”: popular photos are those that grab attention on a quick scroll past, and might get themselves a double tap or comment (hello, beautifully lit gooey cookies and chocolate cake). Fewer people take the leap to the home of the blog itself, and those that do are less likely to read whatever the author has written above the recipe. Complaints about too many photos, too many ads, not wanting to “read your life story” and too much scrolling is common. (Obviously this is a generalisation, and I know many people still pore over magazines and blog posts – but I think it is safe to say it is to a lesser extent).

I would argue that there are two main things contributing to this. One is that it is easy to forget that all this content is free. Bloggers are, for the most part, unpaid. We spend time creating and photographing recipes because we love it, and if that means we put up a few more photos, add ads for some side income, and write down thoughts above the recipe that aren’t quite as well edited as a magazine, then that is our prerogative. There is no paywall, subscription, or cookbook price on these recipes.

The other is that living in an age of fast content means we aren’t as practiced at focusing. There is more frustration at anything (writing, ads, slow links) that slows down our rate of content consumption – too much friction, as they described it over at Vox. We are less likely to sit down to read, more distracted, and more likely to reach for our phone at every moment of potential boredom. I’m not sure what the answer is, but I’ll be making an effort to consume content with a little more awareness of the person behind the screen, make it my focus, and reach for my phone a little less.

This chocolate, pear and hazelnut babka is one that I teased over on instagram recently and was inundated with recipe requests for. It seems like I’ve been chasing babka perfection around the world this year, and it felt like time to make my own. In London was the gorgeously tall and light version by The Good Egg, changed up with dates and walnuts, and then the denser, dark and intensely chocolatey iteration by Honey & Co. Later in Israel there was the buttery individually sized halva and chocolate babkas at Dallal Bakery, and perhaps the most famous version at Lehahim Bakery (the original Breads Bakery in NYC) – only available by the entire loaf, and constructed with croissant dough for crisp layered interiors. I wasn’t going to ask anyone to make croissant dough at home (especially considering that I’ve never even made it myself), and so went with an easy overnight brioche. It took a while to perfect the ratios of dough to loaf tin size, brioche to filling and fluffiness to intensity, but I think I’ve gotten there.

It’s a buttery, fluffy brioche dough swirled up with a rich chocolate filling based on that of Honey & Co and layered with chopped toasted hazelnuts and sliced pear. While it’s still hot, a sugar syrup is brushed over – don’t skip this. It won’t make it soggy or too sweet. And it’s really must easier than it looks – see the step by step photographs for making the twisted shape. From my failures, I also know that even if you roll it too thin, or can’t quite fit it in the tin, or it looks little squashed – when you pull it out of the oven, it always looks 100x better and still tastes great. Christmas morning bake, anyone?