Salted Coconut Babka

aka all the flavours of breakfast at one of Singapore's Kopitiams, but in handy babka format

Hello, and welcome to Newsletter No 66 here on Substack! Thank you for stopping by. If you are already subscribed - THANK YOU! Seeing thousands of you read my newsletters each month means the world to me! And if you are not yet a subscriber, hit the link below if you are interested in recipes as well as tips and tricks to make the most of our modern pantries!

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There have been quite a few new subscribers here over the last few weeks (hi and also thank you!) so before we get to this week’s recipe, below is a short intro and a bit about what you can expect from my newsletter. If you have been reading my newsletter for a while, feel free to skip this section and go straight to today’s recipe. 

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Originally from Germany, I started writing about food and developing recipes over 10 years ago when I was a stressed and overworked junior competition lawyer in London desperate for a creative outlet. After a good decade in the UK and some stints in Austria, Belgium and Italy, I now find myself back in Brussels with my husband, toddler and newborn baby. And while I still work as a competition lawyer, many years ago I happily exchanged my suits and high heels for jeans and trainers as I now work in-house for a large tech company. What hasn’t changed is my passion for all things food. 

Starting my blog eventually led to various freelance recipe development and food writing assignments (e.g. for Food52); a series of supper clubs and pop-up events soon followed and now Substack. The focus of this newsletter is on recipes for delicious cakes, desserts and other sweet treats that make the most of all the flavours seemingly hidden in our modern pantries. See for example this recipe for Preserved Lemon and Labneh Swiss Roll, this recipe for a Sumac and Strawberry Tiramisu-ish or this recipe for Chamomile Financiers.

My recipes and photos have appeared online and in print in various spaces, including the Guardian, the Telegraph, Cosmopolitan Magazine, Food52, the Huffington Post and Buzzfeed. And together with my friend Kaja Hengstenberg (of Krümel, Stockholm fame), I used to host the Two Kitchen Brussels Supperclubs and cooking classes (and take on the odd catering job) here in Brussels.

My hope for this newsletter is that you will start looking at your pantry and spice cupboard with a fresh pair of eyes and see even more possibilities to create delicious cakes, baked goods and desserts! No more single purpose ingredients, no more jars of barely used condiments at the back of the fridge or half-empty jars of different spices gathering dust on their shelves. If you want to see a list of all the recipes that I have already published as part of this newsletter, here is my recipe index.

You can expect to receive a new edition of this newsletter in your inboxes about once a week.

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Today’s recipe reaches you a little later than intended because life with a newborn (and a toddler!) is pretty full-on and I’m still mastering staying on top of our general to dos and life admin, let alone multiple rounds of testing the same recipe until it is ready for sharing with all of you! That being said, this recipe is one I’m very proud of. It is very loosely inspired by what some consider the national breakfast dish of Singapore: aka kaya toast with soft boiled eggs. 

If you have not yet had the pleasure of indulging in this yourself, let me paint you a picture. Dotted all over Singapore are these little mom and pop but increasingly also chain cafes called Kopitiam (literally, coffee shop). And the thing to order at a Kopitiam is kaya toast with soft boiled eggs. This will typically involve two slices of lightly toasted white bread with a layer of kaya and butter between them and that are cut into triangles. Kaya is an eggy coconut- (and sometimes also pandan-) flavoured spread that sits somewhere between a milk jam and a curd. Somewhat unusually, the butter is not actually spread on the toasted bread but placed on it in thick slabs (for faster assembly apparently) - so thick in fact a Dane would use the brilliant Danish word Tandsmør (“tooth butter”) to describe it, i.e. butter so thick that biting into it will leave tooth marks in the butter. On the side you will get a bowl with one or two soft boiled eggs. But these are not your usual 6 minute eggs - no, these eggs are so soft the whites are barely set and opaque. You season the eggs yourself with some soy sauce and white pepper and to eat you dip your kaya toast into the eggs. 

In some ways kaya toast is not unlike having eggs and buttered toast soldiers. But, if you ask me, it is far more delicious! If you have ever had Japanese Tamagoyaki (Japanese omelet) you will already know how soy sauce is the perfect partner in crime for eggs and somehow makes eggs taste even richer and yes, eggier. The same happens here with the soy sauce used to season the soft boiled eggs. And then there is the sweet coconut flavour from the kaya and the milky richness of the thick layer of butter. 

It is even more delicious if you order a coffee to go with your kaya toast. The kopi (coffee) served at Kopitiams is typically made from Robusta beans which have been roasted quite dark together with some sugar and sometimes even corn. This results in a wonderfully bitter coffee with delicious notes of chocolate and caramel. Commonly served poured over ice mixed with condensed milk, this coffee provides the perfect contrast to the sweet, rich, eggy and coconutty kaya toast. 

I haven’t had this breakfast let alone some kaya in years and years but some weeks ago I was reminded of kaya toast both when seeing photos of Eleanor Ford’s recent trip to Singapore and finding out a good friend of mine is moving there this summer. And so a craving for kaya toast suddenly struck.

Instead of simply making kaya toast I wanted to use all of those flavours in a single bake and this is how this Salted Coconut Babka came about. A simple and lightly sweetened enriched dough, beautifully moist thanks to the Tang Zhong method,* wrapped around a salted coconut custard. The custard is essentially a pastry cream made with both canned coconut milk and desiccated coconut that gets a deliciously savoury edge from some soy sauce and is wonderfully rich and buttery thanks to some egg yolks and butter stirred into it before being spread on the dough. A brown butter, coffee and soy glaze plus some toasted coconut shavings provide the perfect finishing touch for this babka. 

*The Tang Zhong method entails adding a small amount of flour (typically 5 per cent of a recipe’s total flour amount) that’s been cooked into a thick paste with 5 times its weight in water or milk (again, taken from the recipe’s liquid ingredients) to the rest of the dough ingredients when mixing the dough together. The benefit of this method is that it ensures a very tender crumb and a babka that stays fresh for longer as this paste, essentially pre-gelatinised flour, allows the dough to absorb more moisture and therefore also helps the finished loaf to stay fresh for longer. 

Salted Coconut Babka 

Note: This Salted Coconut Babka evokes all the elements of breakfast at a Kopitiam in Singapore - an enriched dough that bakes up into a sweet loaf with a velvety crumb, a deliciously eggy and rich coconut custard with a savoury edge from some soy sauce and a brown butter, coffee and soy glaze and some toasted coconut shavings that provide the perfect finishing touch for this babka. The addition of soy sauce to both the coconut custard and the glaze might strike you as unusual but I would urge you to give it a try. Similar to how miso adds not just saltiness when used in desserts, soy sauce provides depth of flavour and complexity that a simple pinch of salt would not achieve. 

For the dough 

285g plus 15g all purpose flour
1.5 tsp dried active yeast
35g sugar
Pinch of salt
30g melted butter
75ml plus 75ml milk, plus 2-3 tbsp to brush on the babka before baking
1 egg 

For the filling 

200ml canned coconut milk
50g desiccated coconut
75g sugar
3 tbsp soy sauce
25g cornstarch
2 egg yolks 
30g butter

For the glaze

1 to 1.5 tbsp milk
¼ tsp soy sauce
125g icing sugar
1 tsp instant espresso
15g melted butter

3 tbsp toasted coconut shavings

Directions

Start by making the tang zhong. In a small saucepan stir together 15g of flour and 75ml milk. Cook on medium heat, stirring constantly, until thickened. Set aside until merely warm to the touch. 

In a bowl whisk together the flour, yeast, sugar and salt. Form a well in the centre and add the tang zhong, melted butter, milk and egg. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until you have a shaggy ball of dough. Knead until the dough is smooth and elastic and passes the window pane test (ca. 15-20 minutes of kneading by hand, and ca. 10-15 minutes using a standmixer). Return the dough to the bowl, cover and set aside somewhere warm to proof for 1.5h or until doubled in size (this can also be done overnight in a covered container in the fridge).

Grease with butter and line a loaf pan with parchment paper. 

While the dough is proofing, make the filling. Add the coconut milk, desiccated coconut and sugar to a saucepan and heat until steaming. In a separate bowl whisk together the cornstarch and the soy sauce. Stir into the steaming milk. Stirring constantly continue to cook the mixture for a few more minutes on low to medium heat until thickened. Add the butter and stir to distribute. Set aside to cool down. Once the pastry cream is merely warm to the touch but no longer hot, whisk in the egg yolks. Cover and place in the fridge until needed.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and roll into a 30-50cm rectangle. Try and spread the filling as evenly across the dough as possible. Starting from one of the long sides of the rectangle, carefully and tightly roll up the dough. Turn the dough seamside down, then, using a pastry cutter or big, sharp knife, cut the dough in half lengthwise. Turn the two pieces of dough cut-side up. Pinch together the ends furthest away from you then carefully twist the two pieces quite tightly, making sure that the cut sides of the dough always face upwards. Once you get to the end of the braid, twist together the ends and fold underneath the braid. Carefully lift the braid into the prepared loaf pan, cover and set aside somewhere warm until well-risen and puffy - another 30-45 minutes. 

Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius / 160 degrees Celsius fan. Brush the babka all over with a little milk, then bake the braid for 35-40 minutes or until golden-brown and a wooden skewer inserted into the centre of the braid comes out clean. Keep an eye on the braid and in case it starts to colour too much, cover with parchment paper or tin foil.

Once the babka is done baking, whisk together the ingredients for the glaze and brush all over the babka. Scatter the toasted coconut shavings all across the babka. Leave to cool completely before cutting.

Thanks to the tang zhong, the glaze and the filling, the babka will stay fresh for several days, just keep it in a closed container at room temperature.