27 Apr Dandelion babka for Spring

An old babka recipe reinvented

I was going to do a completely different post this week, but then we made this dandelion babka. I just had to share it with you now, while the dandelions are perfect. Once they start turning into fluffy balls it’s too late. I first ate this babka when my Ciocia Maryla from Olsztyn made it last summer. The dandelion version came into existence on seeing a million dandelions on our lawn. Knowing that were about to be mowed down, I sent the girls to pick the flowers as I dug out the old recipe. Maryla uses an old recipe from the book all poles have in their kitchen – Kuchnia Polska. No doubt she inherited the cookbook from her mum, auntie Krysia (whose recipe for potato babka you will find in Polska cookbook). As you can in the photo, she added raisins to it instead of the orange zest when she made it for us. She said that she makes it slightly differently each time. Thus, I knew that a lemon and dandelion babka would work beautifully.

What is a babka?

In America, a “babka” is associated with a specific chocolate loaf cake that originated in the Polish-Jewish communities. Just as with kiełbasa and kasha, this is an over-simplification. The chocolate version is just one type of many varieties that exist. The word itself is a diminutive of “baba”, the common name for an old woman. A baba cake is traditionally eaten for Easter and looks like a woman in a big, folk skirt. But a babka could be any woman, just as it can be almost any simple cake, or even savoury bake.

Recipe for dandelion babka

Dandelion babka is perfect for Spring. At other times of the year, you can use this recipe to make different babkas. The original recipe calls for orange rind, you could also add raisins, sultanas or cranberries. The original babka was pricked and soaked in a sweet rum syrup. Maryla leaves this bit out, as did I. However, if you wanted make a rum baba style cake, then this would be the way to go.