c/o Milly Berman

My first year at the University in 2020 was infamously bad. I shouldn’t have to explain that, but I was living in Butterfield C and surviving off of the one and only dining option we had: Usdan, but with an exciting twist: The food placed in a soggy to-go box or wrapped in plastic. I missed my kitchen at home, where I had been baking every week for ten years, and I missed the sweet yeasty smell that would waft upstairs from the oven.  

I outright refused to cook in the Butterfield C kitchen after two traumatic incidents. First, I got three points and a hearing with the dean for cooking there with three people, more than the COVID-19 capacity of two. The second was much worse than the first: I saw a neighbor rolling out meatballs right on the counter without wiping it down afterwards. As a vegetarian and a sane person, it was not an option to use that countertop anymore.  

The worst part of the first-year food experience was the breakfast, or lack thereof. I would usually wake up for my 8:50 a.m. class on Zoom at 8:45 a.m. and eat a granola bar under the table in the miserable morning light. It was on one of those cold, tasteless mornings that I came up with the dorm room cinnamon babka.

The beauty of this recipe is that you can make it all in your dorm room and then walk down to the dorm kitchen with your little loaf pan and pop it right in the oven with no fuss. When you have no kitchen, the world opens up. You begin to see that the surface area of your standard Wesleyan dresser is the perfect amount of space to roll out your dough into a 9-by-13 inch rectangle. Just push your deodorant and shampoo to the side like I did. It’s simple; if you know how to knead, you can make this recipe.

Ingredients (which, in 2020, must have been purchased at Weshop, because I didn’t have a car and wasn’t allowed to leave campus anyway):

Dough:

• 3/4 cup milk
• 1 packet active dry yeast
• 4 tablespoons sugar, divided
• 3 and 3/4 cups all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 7 tablespoons butter (room temperature)

Filling:

• 1/2 cup butter (room temperature)
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

c/o Milly Berman

Method:

1. Heat the milk until slightly warm, but not too hot to stick your finger in. Stir in the yeast and two tablespoons of sugar and let stand for 10 minutes.
2. Mix together the flour, salt, and two tablespoons of sugar. Then add the yeast mixture and eggs.
3. Knead the dough for 10 full minutes. To knead, use your weight to fold the dough over itself, press it down, and fold it again. It should become elastic and start to bounce back when pressed.
4. Add the butter to the dough one tablespoon at a time, kneading in between each addition. Don’t worry if this takes a long time; just make sure all the butter is incorporated into the dough. Cover with a damp towel and prove in a warm corner of your room for one hour.
5. Make the filling by mixing together the butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt into a smooth paste.
6. Clean off your Wesleyan-provided dresser thoroughly. Lightly flour the surface and place your dough on top. Use anything round you have in your room (I used a balsamic vinegar bottle, but you could use a wine bottle or an actual rolling pin) to roll out the dough into a 9-by-13 inch rectangle. 
7. Use a butter knife to spread your filling out on the dough, reaching every corner. Then, starting at the long edge, roll the dough up into a swirl (like a cinnamon roll). Using a sharp knife, cut the roll lengthwise, making two long logs. Place them next to each other with the filling side up. 
8. Make an X shape by placing one of the logs on top of the other. Continue twisting by alternatively placing one log on top of the other until they form something like a twist. Place the twist in a greased, nine-inch loaf pan. Cover and prove for one hour.
9. Halfway through the proving time, go downstairs and preheat the dorm kitchen to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Then turn right around and LEAVE. (This is the best part of this recipe.)
10. Bake for 45 minutes or until you can smell the cinnamon all the way from your room. Let cool to room temperature before eating.

Milly Berman can be reached at mgberman@wesleyan.edu.