Apples and Honey Babka

Just in time for Rosh Hashanah, this round, braided apples and honey babka is packed full of apple butter and drizzled with a honey icing.

Traditionally, on Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish new year) you dip apples in honey, and eat a round homemade challah bread to symbolize the start of a new calendar cycle. This round coiled apples and honey babka combines all three of those things in one sticky, ooey-gooey, sweet dessert bread.

Whether you're kicking off the new year or just want to really wow your friends at brunch, your search for the perfect recipe ends here. This apples and honey round babka is it.

The filling for this apples and honey babka is super simple — a store-bought apple butter slightly dressed up with a bit of honey and cinnamon. Finely minced apples add a nice bit of sweetness and crunch.

Honestly, the trickiest part of the whole babka-making process is the twisting and coiling when it comes time to shape. Fair warning: Things will get messy. (But less messy than the original version of this recipe did!).

I do recommend knowing what plate or serving platter you want to use before you start baking, because once you take this apples and honey babka out of the oven you really don't want to have to move it too much. If you're particularly mess-averse, I did include instructions for how to bake this in a loaf pan instead of as a spiral.

The base dough for this babka is a riff on my soft brioche loaf with some added fall spices and has a few hour-long rising periods and needs to cool completely before you add the honey drizzle, so I recommend making this over a two day period.

Shape and bake the dough one day, let it cool overnight, then add the icing drizzle shortly before serving. You can rush it a bit, but if you have the time to space it out, you should.

Apples and honey babka ingredient notes

Here's what you'll need to make this apples and honey babka! See recipe card (at the end of the post) for quantities.

• Nutmeg - Whole nutmeg freshly grated on a microplane zester is always best. I get my whole nutmeg Spicewalla where a small tin will last you literally for years.
• Milk - Whole milk works best — the fat content is an important part of this enriched dough. If you use a reduced fat or skim milk, you may find the dough is too sticky to knead and shape!
• Unsalted butter - You'll need one stick for the dough, and 1 tablespoon for the icing. Make sure the butter is at a true room temperature for both. Room temperature butter should be soft and spreadable, but not melted. You should be able to easily press a finger into it and make an indent. If you're using salted butter, cut the amount of the salt in the dough in half.
• Apple - A crisp, firm apple like a pink lady, Cosmic Crisp, honey crisp, or green apple works best. Avoid anything soft or mealy in texture like macintosh or red delicious.

how to make apples and honey babka

Babka dough is a brioche dough, which means it's enriched with butter, milk, and eggs. The butter is added last because it's a fat, and if you include it from the start, it will coat the flour and other ingredients and make it harder for them to absorb the milk.

1. Mix the dough - Whisk the dry ingredients together, then whisk the wet ingredients together (except for the butter) and pour them into the dry ingredients. Mix everything together on low speed with a dough hook until you have a shaggy, messy ball in the bowl and there aren't any dry bits of flour left in the bottom.
2. Knead the dough - Increase the speed and mix on medium until the dough passes the "windowpane test". You may need to slowly drizzle in an additional 1-2 teaspoons milk or dust in some flour to get the dough to be soft, smooth, and stretchy. If the dough hasn't reached windowpane after about 7 minutes, drizzle in an additional ¼ teaspoon milk at a time while kneading, giving it time to incorporate before adding more, then cover the dough and let it rest for 5-10 minutes. Knead 2-3 minutes more. It should get there!
3. Add the butter - Add the soft, room temperature butter 1 tablespoon at a time, letting it fully incorporate between each addition. This can take another 7-10 minutes. Be patient.
4. Knead the dough - Once all the butter has been added, knead the dough again on medium speed until it passes the "windowpane test" a second time.

What to expect when adding butter: Each time you add a new piece of butter, your dough will fall apart a little bit, it might slide around in the bowl or fall off the dough hook, but just let the mixer keep running and it will come back together. You're asking the gluten network to incorporate quite a lot of fat at this stage — be patient!

Place the dough in a lightly greased bowl, cover it, let it rise at room temperature until just about doubled in size. Depending on how cold or warm your kitchen is, and the temperature of the milk you used, this may happen quickly or may take a bit longer.

Once it has doubled in size, place it in the fridge for another 2 hours or even overnight to firm up the butter so the dough is easier to handle for shaping. Leave the dough in the fridge until you've got the filling prepped and are ready to start rolling and shaping your apples and honey babka.

Easy apple butter filling

Rolling, cutting, twisting, and shaping your babka dough is challenging enough — there's no point in overcomplicating it by also trying to make apple butter from scratch. Store-bought apple butter with a bit of cinnamon and honey is all you need for a great babka filling.

Assembling and shaping apples and honey babka

Clear off a nice big stretch of counter or table space. It's going to get messy, so don't do this on grandma's nice vintage dining table or whatever. Lightly dust your work surface with flour, then transfer the dough from the bowl to the countertop. Dust the top of the dough lightly with flour as well.

Deflate the chilled dough to knock any air out of it. Then gently stretch it dough into a rough rectangle shape, and use a rolling pin to roll it out into a 20" long rectangle about ¼" thick.

It's okay if you don't have a perfect rectangle or if you end up with something a little bigger or are slightly off in your dimensions. The important measurement to achieve is that ¼" thickness. Once you shape the babka, it still has to rise one more time, and the dough will almost double in size. So if you start with dough that's ½" thick... well, you get the idea.

Spread your apple-butter filling across the surface of the dough leaving one long edge bare. Once you've got a thin, even layer of apple butter, sprinkle on your minced apples (and optional walnuts) trying to distribute them as evenly as possible.

To roll the babka: Start with one of the bottom corners and begin rolling it up, moving across the long side of the dough from one side to the other. Roll tightly, trying not to trap any air bubbles inside. Repeat until your dough rectangle is rolled into a log. This will get easier as you go.

Once you roll the dough into a log, place it on a sheet pan and chill it in the fridge for 10-20 minutes before cutting and twisting. The dough warms up quite a bit while you're rolling it and the next step is MUCH easier and less messy if the dough is chilled. (The recipe will still work if you skip this step, but do so at your peril!)

Take a knife or a metal bench scraper with a sharp edge and cut lengthwise down the middle of the rolled dough log. You're creating two long thin strips, revealing all the layers inside. Yes, you're right, it will get messy. How'd you guess?

Turn the two strips so that the inside layers are facing up. Starting in the middle, cross one strip over the other to form an X shape. Continue crossing the two strips of dough over each other until one half of the dough is twisted. Repeat this process with the other half of the dough strips so you have a fully twisted rope of babka.

Why start twisting from the middle? It's a lot easier to pick up and cross shorter pieces of dough over each other. If you started at one end of the dough, you'd be trying to handle almost 20" of gooey, apple-butter filled dough at once. This way you can work in easier, less stressful, smaller sections.

Bend one end of the babka twist in toward itself. Then wrap the other end of the twisted babka rope around the folded bit to create the spiral. Tuck the end underneath the coiled dough. The babka will seem lopsided at this point, but that's okay — it'll settle down during the final rise.

Cover the coiled babka loosely with plastic wrap and let it rest while you scrub all the ooey-gooey apple butter filling off your hands and wipe down your counters.

During this time, the babka should nearly double in size — it will grow outwards as well as upwards as it rests. When you poke it gently with a finger it should seem airy and light and spring back slightly. That's how you know its ready to bake.

Finish with a simple honey icing drizzle

Let your babka cool completely before you drizzle it with the honey icing. If the dough is hot or warm, the icing will melt and slide off the dough. To drizzle it, use a fork or even the whisk you used to mix the icing to drag long ropes of it across the babka in a zig-zag shape.

To move the babka off the cooling rack and onto your serving platter be confident, move quickly, and don't let it see the fear in your eyes. Another option is to cut it in half, in quarters, or wedges/slices, and then move it onto the serving tray.

Practical Tips & Recipe Notes

• Baking ahead: You can make this up to two days ahead of time! Wait to do the honey icing drizzle until right before you serve it. Keep it wrapped in plastic until you're ready to serve.
• Struggling to incorporate the butter? Butter is slippery and when you're trying to add a lot of it into a well-kneaded dough with a strong gluten network, the first thing it does is coat the entire outside of the dough. This makes it quite slippery and the dough hook might have trouble picking it up. Usually if you just let it go it will snag the dough again on its own, but if it's really having trouble you can pause the mixer and use a spatula or your hands to fold the dough around the hook again.

📖 Recipe

UPDATED 8/2021 — I've given this recipe a fairly massive post-pastry school update. I retested the recipe and reworked the dough to make it MUCH simpler, easier, and less messy to handle, shot all new photos, simplified the filling, and added a lot more info and a more robust FAQ section. How's that for a shanah tovah?