In desperate need of comfort food

Cinnamon Babka with Brown Butter Cream Cheese Glaze

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This week has been complete and utter garbage. I don’t want to get into too much detail but let’s just say; the house buying process in this country is simultaneously far too slow and also ridiculously stressful. To say I was in need of comfort would be a massive understatement, I wanted to throw my toys out of the pram and throw a massive hissy fit. But thats not really me or how I deal with stress, really I wanted nothing more than to curl up with a blanket and eat my feelings and hide from the world. I would definitely be classified as a classic comfort eater. I celebrate with food and I commiserate with food, and this week I needed some serious emotional support in the form of something delicious and warming. Enter this weeks recipe, a cinnamon babka made with incredibly soft and fluffy milk bread and coated in a wonderful brown butter cream cheese glaze.

Baking has always been an escape for me, a way to process the events I am dealing with and as a way to block out negativity, even if just for an hour. When I worked a 9-5 many years ago, baking was the thing I did to deal with stress, to give me a creative outlet and to even deal with boredom. I hated working for a bank, it was monotonous and the highlight of my day was planning what I might bake that evening. I spent so much time googling recipes that I am still surprised I wasn’t fired for being unproductive. At that time there was nothing better than getting home putting on some music and baking something delicious. For that hour nothing else existed, it might sound corny but it really felt meditative.

Today, after baking for a living for 13 years, the process for me is not exactly the same. Yes I still love to bake and I cant imagine myself doing much else, but it doesn’t normally give me the same mental break or release. I think this is partly because when a hobby becomes a job you simply add the stresses of a regular job to your hobby, it’s also probably because the baking I do is almost entirely for work so it holds a slightly different connotation. This recipe, however, came from entirely from stress, and from a desire for comfort. So whilst the recipe is here for you, and you could call that work, it was also a rare occasion where I felt like I did in my early 20’s when baking was my escape. The dog was at daycare, the flat was empty, and I baked this beautiful babka, with some Kylie playing loudly in the kitchen to keep me company and through that process I was able to make sense of the situation and come to peace with it, baking became meditation again.

When I think about comfort foods, I think of the familiar, of warming spices and something a little nostalgic. The bread dough I used in this recipe is an incredibly soft and fluffy milk bread. Made with the Chinese method of tangzhong the bread is soft and squidgy and felt like a perfect choice for my ultimate comfort food bake. The filling is a classic butter, sugar, cinnamon paste as you would use in traditional cinnamon buns. The glaze, oh the glaze, is a mixture of brown butter and cream cheese. Does the babka need the glaze? Probably not. Would I make it without the glaze? Let’s be serious, of course not.

RECIPE FOR THE BABKA IS BELOW FOR PAID SUBSCRIBERS