Vegan Cinnamon Babka
Howdy amigos! Let’s make Vegan Cinnamon Babka today! Hooray!
Let me just begin by saying this was one of the best babkas I’ve ever had! I have a couple of other babka recipes on my website, but this is my first vegan babka recipe!
I decided to make a cinnamon filling instead of a chocolate one, kind of like a cinnamon roll shaped like a babka.
This post may contain affiliate links. I earn a commission from qualified purchases. Please read our Privacy policy here.
So we start with a simple dough, that takes about 12 minutes to put together.
After you make the Vegan Babka dough, it’s best if you put it in the fridge and let it slowly proof in there overnight.
If you really want to make the dough on the same day, it won’t be the end of the world! I wrote on the recipe below that you can also let the dough rise for a couple of hours outside of the fridge, then put it in the fridge for another couple of hours, and move on from there. Which reduces your waiting time in half basically.
Anyway, you want to work with a cold dough, straight from the fridge. It will be a lot easier to manage, and it won’t be too sticky, so you won’t need a lot of flour to roll the dough out.
Gently roll out your dough until you obtain a rectangle that measures about 12×16″.
And you can use a knife to trim the sides of the dough, so you have a beautiful rectangle.
You can bake the trimmings if you want to. My 3 year old son got ahold of my trimmings and I let him play with them, since I know where he is coming from because I used to love playing with dough when I was a little girl.
Here is your “even” rectangle. Ok, we don’t have to get the sides of the dough completely straight.
And then, it comes time to brush the filling on top of the dough. I used an offset spatula. And made sure to leave 1/2″ border around the edges of the rectangle.
Then you can start rolling your dough, from the shortest side.
You will end up with this beautiful (and slightly messy) log. At this point, I recommend placing the log in the fridge for about 30 minutes, so it’s easier to shape the babka.
If the filling is super soft when you do this, it will leak all over the place and stain your entire dough. Trust me, I’ve been there. I’ve made many babkas before I made this Vegan Cinnamon Babka.
Once the log has refrigerated for a bit, you can pull it out. Slice it in half lengthwise.
You will end up with two pieces just like this.
Put one on top of the other making an X.
And then, you can start braiding the babka from the middle up and then from the middle down.
After you’ve braided both sides, tuck the ends in. And place the dough in a greased loaf pan.
And let the Vegan Cinnamon Babka rest for 60-90 minutes before baking it.
Your wait will be totally worth it once you see this coming out of the oven.
Wait for the dough to cool down before glazing it. And then feel free to slice it, serve it, devour it!
The bottom and sides of this Vegan Cinnamon babka were the best bits, because they were caramelized, gooey, sweet, scrumptious! My mouth waters as I type this! If I still had this loaf around I’d be reaching for a slice now. But I don’t have it anymore since I made it a couple of weeks ago.
If you like this Vegan Cinnamon babka, here are some more Vegan recipes and vegan desserts you might like:
- Green Smoothie Vegan Cupcakes
- Vegan Cannoli
- Vegan Brownie Chocolate Chip Cheesecake
- Vegan Raspberry Macarons
- Blueberry Pineapple Vegan Donuts
- Vegan Salted Caramel Macarons
- Funfetti Ice Cream Sandwiches
Vegan Cinnamon Babka
Ingredients
Vegan Babka Dough
- 3/4 cup non-dairy milk 177 ml
- 2 teaspoons instant yeast 6.3 grams, 0.22 oz
- 1/4 cup brown sugar 50 grams, 1.76 oz
- 2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour 340 grams, 12 oz
- 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 1/4 cup coconut oil room temperature (52 grams, 1.83 oz)
- 4 tablespoons vegan butter room temperature (56 grams, 2 oz)
Filling
- 1/2 cup vegan butter room temperature (113 grams, 4 oz)
- 1/2 cup brown sugar 100 grams, 3.5 oz
- 1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon powder
Glaze
- 1 cup powdered sugar 127 grams, 4.5 oz
- 2 tablespoons non-dairy milk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract
Instructions
Vegan Babka Dough
- Heat milk until it’s lukewarm (90 – 100F). Add yeast and brown sugar, mix to combine.
- Add flour, salt and start mixing with a spoon or with your mixer. You can use the paddle attachment on this part, but I just go straight for the dough hook.
- Slowly start to add butter and coconut oil 1 tablespoon of each at a time, while you mix.
- If you were using the paddle attachment to mix the ingredients, switch to the dough hook now. Knead the dough for 8 minutes, until it’s smooth, incorporated, springy, and tacky, but not sticky.
- At this point, place the dough in a bowl lightly coated with oil.
- Cover bowl with plastic wrap and place it in the fridge overnight.*
Filling
- Mix butter with brown sugar and cinnamon powder. Stir to combine and incorporate.
- Assembly
- Prepare a loaf pan by greasing it lightly with oil spray or coconut oil, or butter. You can also use a piece of parchment paper on the pan, to line the bottom and sides to make sure the dough won’t stick. In my experience the dough won’t stick if I remove it from the pan while the bread is still kind of hot.
- Remove dough from the fridge and work with the cold dough.
Place it on a surface barely dusted with flour. And start rolling it.- Roll it into a 12”x16” rectangle. Use a knife to trim the sides if you want. You can roll the trimmings and bake them. (or let your 3 year old play with them, if you are me)
- Spread the filling all over the surface of the dough, leaving half an inch on each side of the rectangle.
- From the shortest side, start to roll up the dough into a log.
- Place the log in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. Trust me on this one, it will make the process much cleaner and less messy, and your babka will look way better once baked, since the filling won’t have leaked everywhere.
- Remove the log from the fridge, slice it in half lengthwise.
- You will end up with two halves like this.
- Cross both halves in the middle like an X.
- Start braiding from the middle to the bottom, and them braid from the middle to the top.
- Tuck the ends in and place the babka in the loaf pan.
- Let dough rise for 60-90 minutes, depending on how warm your kitchen is, and if the dough came straight from the fridge. It might take even longer for the dough to rise, if it’s a cold day.
- Dough will be ready once you touch its surface lightly with your finger and the dough springs back.
- Pre-heat the oven to 350F.
- Bake dough in the oven for 30-40 minutes. Babka should be golden on top, and cooked in the middle.
- Remove from the oven. Let dough cool before pouring glaze on top.
Glaze
- To make the glaze, combine powdered sugar, milk, and vanilla. Whisk until incorporated and smooth. Pour over babka, let the glaze dry before slicing the loaf.
Storage
- Store in the fridge for up to 4 days, let it sit at room temperature for 10 minutes before serving.
O visual está sensacional. Imagino com o aroma da canela então, muito gostoso!!!!!!!!
Obrigada pai! 🙂
Could I use all vegan butter and no coconut oil?
Yes that will be fine!
This turned out wonderfully!! Thank you for providing such clear instructions!
Oh awesome!!! Thank you so much for the feedback!!
I made this yesterday for Easter and it was phenomenal! Ate it all in one go, thank you so much for the wonderful recipe with clear and easy instructions. The photos were so tempting, this will definitely be on the menu more often now!
Yay! That’s amazing to hear! Thank you!!!
Hi! Looking forward to making this. Would a simple syrup over top rather than icing work without affecting texture? Thank you!
Yes but make sure to pour the syrup right after it comes out of the oven while it’s still hot.
made this and it was so good even without the glaze! i made a smaller one with the extra dough and a matcha black sesame filling, was really good too!
matcha black sesame filling sounds amazing!!!! love those flavors!!!
I’ve never used coconut oil before so I got refined coconut oil. Is refined coconut oil okay for this recipe?
Totally fine!
Hi it looks delicious. Could I use sourdough starter as my yeast? If so how much in grams do you recommend please?
This is what I found on a website: “A quick rule to adapt recipes to sourdough is: Substitute 1 cup of starter for each package of yeast, and then subtract about 1/2 cup of water and 3/4 cup of flour from the recipe to compensate for the water and flour in the starter.”
This is the website
However I can’t guarantee it will work as I haven’t experimented with it
Thank you so much Canola, I’ll try it out.
Camila, soo sorry
This recipe is amazing! The bread is super moist and tender and the flavor is absolutely delicious. This was totally worth the time and effort. Yum!
Yay!! that makes me so happy! thank you so much Sarah!!!!
Everything came out delicious, but the only issue I had was that the sugar glaze (which I poured on once the babka was cool) dried clear, so you can’t even see there’s any on top. How do you get the glaze to appear so white?
It just means your glaze was too thin. It needed more powdered sugar and less liquid 🙂
Hm, I used the amounts that the recipe specified. But I’ll try it again with half as much liquid to start and see how it goes. Thanks!
It depends on the brand of powdered sugar you are using, whether you used the weight measurement or the volume (by cups), also depending on the milk you used, some milks are thicker or thinner, I find that some brands of almond milk I use are just thicker than others.
What size loaf tin do you need ?
I used a 9×5″ pan. You can use a slightly smaller or slightly bigger pan, the slightly smaller pan will make the bread taller, and the slightly bigger pan will make the bread wider and flatter.
I have this in the fridge proofing right now. I’m concerned that it hasn’t appeared to rise at all, is this normal for the first proof?
how long has it been proofing? regardless yes it’s normal to not rise too much specially in the beginning
My go-to babka dough recipe. I’ve also had great luck using a combination of 1/4 cup coconut oil and vegan butter without adding the other 4 tablespoons of vegan butter (for health reasons). Cold fermentation is a game changer for babka, and if you have the time, don’t skip it. Thank you for this recipe!
That’s a great tip! Thank you so much for sharing!!!