Delicious Pistachio Babka

Ingredients

The dough

25 g yeast
200 ml of lukewarm water
1 egg
50 g soft butter
400 g wheat flour
3 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon cardamom
1 teaspoon salt
1 beaten egg for brushing
A little oil

Pistachio ceremony

100 g marzipan
100 g soft butter
100 g sugar
100 g unsalted pistachios, preferably extra green

Here’s how you do it

• Dissolve the yeast in the lukewarm Danish water – add eggs and sugar and stir lightly.
• Add the cardamom and salt together with a little wheat flour, and then stir the flour in a little at a time, until all the flour is used and collected in the dough.
• Add the butter in small lumps and knead the dough well, preferably on a machine, until it releases the edges – it takes approx. 5-8 min. at medium speed.
• Grease your hands with a little oil, take out the dough and lightly roll it up by folding it under each other. Butter also raises the bowl with a little oil, put the dough back in it, lines the bowl with film and a cloth and lets it rise in a warm place for a few hours.
• 15 min. before the dough is ready, blend the pistachios into a medium flour – or finely chop by hand. Stir them together with the other ingredients for the remnant and leave them on the kitchen table until the dough has risen.
• Take the dough out of the bowl, sprinkle a little flour on the table, and carefully pull the dough out into a small square. Roll the dough into a rectangle of approx. 1/2 cm in thickness. If the dough can be rolled without extra flour it is clear to prefer.
• Grease half of the surface with pistachio remnants – I just use my fingers.
• Fold the dough in the middle, on the narrow joint, so that you end up with a more or less square piece, – mash it lightly together.
• Cut the dough into 12-14 strips of approx. 1 1/2 cm in width – this is most easily done with a pizza cutter.
• Roll the strips one at a time so that they kind of form a curl. Then take the strip up in your hand and wrap it around your fingers and put the end in the middle and press it down well so that the spinner does not open during baking.
• Place the spinners on a baking sheet, lined with parchment paper, with the ends facing down. Let them rise for approx. 30 min. with a cloth over.
• Brush the swirls with beaten egg and bake them in a preheated oven at 200 degrees, plain oven, for approx. 12-14 min. I always bake one plate at a time in an ordinary oven – you can also bake 2 plates at a time at hot air 180 degrees.
• Let them cool on a rack before packing them in an airtight container or bag.