Saturday, July 10, 2004


a dream deferred. . .

last night i realized that the hope of the russian coffee cake was in danger of dying. it had to be acted upon immediately.

moved by this spirit, i opened nancy silverton's "pastries from the la brea bakery" (thanks again, marshall!) and pondered the recipe. this is an audio post - click to play her russian coffee cake looks more like a fancy chocolate babka to me than the 3-layered delight with walnuts, dried currants, and dried cherries found at the former royale kosher bakery, once a glory of the upper west side.

the royale's closing left an unhealable wound in the new york soul. . .but there it is.

silverton's recipe requires a rich batch of babka dough; a filling made of sour cream, chocolate cake crumbs, and chopped dark chocolate; and finally a sweet streusel topping.

the babka dough has to be made the night before. in doubt, i asked mr. right how he felt about the dilemma: chocolate filling or fruit filling?

without hesitation he replied: chocolate. which of course is why i married him. . .

but long-time readers know following other people's recipes exactly is not my forté. the longer i looked at silverton's, the more i saw room for improvements.

her basic babka dough looked fine. i made that last night, altho' i cut the butter into the flour a little smaller than she called for because i think that i'd rather have an all-over "flakier" dough than one with a few big buttery pockets.

making the filling this morning required more creativity. her sour cream base for the filling was just, well, sour cream. nonsense!

thus i improved it with a tablespoon of vanilla bean paste and a little cinnamon. much better.

the crumb filling was just, well, chocolate cake or cookie crumbs. again, i improved this by tossing home-made chocolate biscotti with almonds and store-bought chocolate-filled marbled pirouline into the food processor to grind together finely.

finally, she called for 3 oz. coarsely chopped chocolate. no, no, no. try 5 oz. of chocolate chunks.

some pieces will melt into veins and mix with the cookie crumbs; others will stay whole but become soft around the edges, adding another element of texture.

silverton is famed across the u.s.a. for the not-too-fussy but still decadent nature of her work. so call me trimalchio if you must -- i'm content to write my own satyricon here. . .

at any rate, this recipe rivals any in julia child's arsenal for the number of dishes, utensils, pots, pans, implements, and steps. it's frankly a nightmare and makes a huge mess.

on the other hand, it could very well be worth it! the resulting 2 loaves are presently rising in my oven.

if this turns out to be an amazing success, i'll post my version of silverton's recipe in an update. . .

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