Fig, Caramel and Pecan Babka

Fig, Caramel and Pecan Babka is the most divine combination of soft, buttery bread with a nutty, sticky filling. Eat warm sliced with an extra drizzle of caramel or slather with butter for the most delicious treat ever.

This has to be one of the prettiest babkas that I’ve seen in a long time. I’ve always been intimidated by making bread, but I really wished that I'd tried it sooner. It may take some time to do, but it’s certainly not hard as long as you follow the step-by-step instructions in the method of the recipe.

Now, by the time I photographed this babka, I had made it three times already previously. However, when I started out, I wasn’t prepared to develop my own recipe. I wanted to follow a tried and tested recipe so that I could understand the ins and outs of the babka-making process.

So I turned to my blogging friend, Erin of a Cloudy Kitchen, for a great babka dough recipe. I followed her step-by-step, clear and concise instructions, and low and behold, a beautiful babka knot was created.

You’ll find photos of the process required to make my Fig, Caramel and Pecan Babka, and I hope this helps you create your very own beauty. You’ll find that it’s not as hard as you think!

The Babka Dough

This dough may require several steps (as does every dough!), but I tell you, it is so worth it!

The first proof occurs once all the ingredients have been mixed and kneaded, and the dough sits in an oiled bowl and is covered with cling wrap. It then doubles in size- it's a fascinating process to watch- I love it! But don’t forget to oil all around that bowl- it will make getting the dough out after it has risen so much easier.

At room temperature, the dough takes about one and a half hours to rise, by which point you’ll need to punch out some of the air and form it into a rectangular block of dough before wrapping in cling wrap and freeing it for one hour. We do this so that the dough is cold when we roll it out. It's much easier to work with the dough when cold and shape it how you like.

If like me, you don't want to wait around for two hours, then I do this first proof overnight in the fridge. I personally prefer this method as it means the dough gets to rise and chill all at the same time.

You don't need to freeze the dough at any point with this method. You can wake up, roll out your dough, fill and shape it and then let it rise and bake within an hour and a half from getting out of bed. Not bad for homemade fresh bread!

Fig Caramel and Pecan Babka

So, it’s true that I have a mild obsession with figs and love eating them raw but also cooked. When they cook, the sugars in the fruit caramelise and break the fruit down a bit, leaving a deliciously sweet and sticky fig layer.

Imagine how they turn nestled into layers of fluffy dough and then layered on top of homemade salted caramel sauce. I swear it is something extra! The pecans chopped up in the layers of the dough add the perfect nutty textural crunch to the bread.

As the babka bakes, the caramel oozes and bubbles into all the crevices of the dough layers. And then, as it cools, it hardens on the outside to create a crunchy, sticky layer on the edge of the babka. Ohhh, all my heart-eye emojis are going crazy.

The surprising thing was that this recipe didn’t turn out too sweet at all. The first time I made it, I thought that the amount of caramel sauce slathered on the dough that it would sweeten it tremendously. But surprisingly, it didn’t at all. I think that’s because the dough itself isn’t sweet. With only two tablespoons of sugar dispersed into that amount of dough, it yields a rich, buttery taste, but not a sweet one. Which is perfect if you want to fill it with cheese or pesto as a savoury bread.