Bakestarters Christmas Edition Baking Kit: Earl Grey Dark Chocolate Babka

Yes, I've successfully made my 1st ever chocolate babka, all thanks to Bakestarters! 

Bakestarters is a local company specialising in baking and baking kits, which come with freshly packed and individually pre-portioned ingredients, along with a recipe card and detailed instructions, tips and even a QR code linking to a tutorial video. Other than eggs, Bakestarters measures and packs all the ingredients that we'll need, including fresh milk, butter and fresh fruits!

Some of the kits even come pre-packed with baking tools such as loaf pans, cookie cutters and parchment paper, offering baking enthusiasts of all skill levels a fun and hassle-free baking experience.

For this coming Christmas, Bakestarters has launched their all new festive Christmas collection comprising of 8 baking kits:

1. Gingerbread Men

2. Passionfruit Yule Log

3. Chocolate Peppermint Yule Log

4. Blackforest Brownies

5. Orange Pistachio Biscotti

6. Pumpkin Spice Biscoff Loaf

7. Earl Grey Dark Chocolate Babka

8. Tiramisu (no bake)

Initially I was thinking of giving the passionfruit yule log a go, but after realising that I actually do not have the required baking pan size, and it will probably NOT fit into my small oven as well, I decided to give babka a try! 

As you can see, the baking kit comes with individually packed and labelled,  pre-portioned ingredients in a cute box, which you will also find your recipe and instruction cards. Other ingredients that required chilling, like butter and fresh milk, were well packed into a small cooler bag, stuffed with a generous amount of ice packs to keep everything nice and cold. 

And frankly speaking, this pre-portioned, individually packed idea brought so much convenience and it took all the hassle of measuring out the ingredients one by one out of the way. It took me less than 5 minutes to get all the ingredients for the bread dough mixed up in my bowl and all I did was snip-pour-chuck. 

Well, there's just one thing I couldn't quite understand was why they need to pack the unsalted butter in resealable bags, when technically there shouldn't be anything left behind for us to reseal?

But anyway, that's hardly of any importance at all. 

Bakestarters has obviously put in a lot of effort curating and perfecting their recipes and ingredients, for I totally did not need to add in any more liquid or flour to "perfect" out my bread dough. I mean, if you do bake bread, you will probably face the very common issue of differing hydration level across different brands of flour, or even between different batches of the same brand of flour, right? There's never a time I found myself not needing to add in that extra few teaspoons/tablespoons of flour or water to my overly moist or dry dough ball. But with Bakestarters babka baking kit, I got my clean bowl and clean hands easily with less than 15 minutes of hand-kneading, and reach the windowpane stage within 20 minutes! 

However, instead of following their instruction of letting it proof till double in size for 1 to 1.5 hrs, I let my dough slow-proof in the fridge overnight (for almost 12 hours) instead, which will allow the bread to develop more (yeasty) flavour. As babka is made from enriched bread dough (brioche) which tends to be a lot softer (and harder to manage if you're not a very seasoned bread-baker), leaving the dough rest for a couple of hours in the fridge also helps with all the rolling and shaping later on. 

Since the baking kit is supposed to yield two loaves/wreath of babka, I decided to make one following their instruction to get a babka wreath, and another into a simple twisted loaf, topped with cinnamon streusels, YUMS!

And I also dropped a few pieces of the remaining streusels on the babka wreath, which I kind of regret. It'll probably look better without the random "spots"?

Look at those pretty chocolate swirls! But well, I kind of cut the wreath in the wrong direction and got a full cut across the tucked ends with no chocolate swirls instead. BOO!

But I have to say, this recipe is DA BOMBZ! The sweet brioche bread is so soft and tender, that it's almost cake-like. Even my mum and brother, who aren't fans of chocolate, loved it!

Bakestarters Christmas Collection 2018 Baking Kits is now up for preorder until 7 Dec, 2359 hr, and delivery of the kits will be from 11 to 21 Dec.
If you miss the preorder, do not worry! Bakestarters Christmas collection is still open for orders after 7 Dec, subject to availability of delivery dates. Do note that the blackout dates indicate full delivery slots so it's advisable for you guys to cart out quickly should you want to purchase any of the kits! You will also be able to get your kits in time for the New Year (if that's what you are planning for) as Bakestarters will be delivering after 25th December too!

For more information, visit their website HERE

Till then,

Mia Foo