Babka is more than just reminiscent of your bubbe—it literally means grandmother in Polish.

As the name suggests, grandmothers were typically the bakers behind the babka. In the Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, Gil Marks writes that the dessert was most likely the result of extra challah dough that was cleverly turned into an additional treat by mid-19th-century Eastern European bubbes. And thank god for that! Somewhere between a bread and a cake, the sweet loaf-shaped delicacy can be eaten for breakfast, as a midday snack, or, more traditionally, as a dessert. On the off chance there are any leftovers, it’s also great for making French toast or bread pudding.

While originally stuffed with dried fruit and cinnamon, in the last half-century American Jews have immortalized chocolate babka as the premiere variety. (You may remember the Seinfeld episode when Elaine famously dubbed cinnamon the “lesser babka.”)

Even now, with babka something of a household name for Jewish and non-Jewish New Yorkers alike, if bubbe isn’t baking it, you’re probably not eating it. No longer available only in haimish bakeries, babka can be found in Zabars, Zaros, and even Bouchon Bakeries—though the recipe has, somewhat shockingly, remained the same.

Why make babka, available by the dozen at your neighborhood bakery, on your own? I could tell you to make one to be true to your roots, to honor your grandparents, or to finally use up that instant yeast packet in your cabinet. But the reason is simpler than that. There are few things in this world more delicious than fresh bread, straight out of the oven. One of those things just happens to be fresh bread straight out of the oven with melted chocolate and butter oozing out of it.

These “Trail Mix Babka Cupcakes” are a contemporary twist on the classic loaf, keeping with the latest in the cupcake-craze and portion controlled for the weight conscious among us. Simply pairing chocolate and cinnamon filling into one cupcake produces an original recipe while preserving the integrity of babka’s history. Bake a dozen and send a basket to your bubbe!

Not Your Bubbe’s Trail-Mix Babka Cupcakes
Yield: 14-16 Babka Cupcakes

Ingredients:
Dough
¾ cup milk or soy milk
¼ cup melted butter or margarine
2 teaspoons fast-acting dry yeast
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 ½ cups all purpose flour
1 ½ cups whole wheat flour
¼ cup + one teaspoon sugar
¼ cup water
1 egg
½ teaspoon salt

Trail-mix Filling
10 oz. chocolate chips
1 ½ teaspoons cinnamon
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup cold butter or margarine
1/3 cup chopped nuts (walnuts, peanuts, or almonds)
1/3 cup chopped dried fruit (raisins, craisins, apricots, or dried apple work well)

Streusel Topping (Optional)
1/3 cup confectioners sugar
1/3 cup all purpose flour
¼ cup butter or margarine
1 tablespoon milk or soymilk
Egg wash (one egg beaten with one tablespoon milk/soy milk)

Special Equipment
Stand mixer (recommended but not essential)
Rolling pin
Cupcake pans

Directions:
1. Melt butter or margarine in saucepan and stir in the milk.

2. Warm milk and melted butter slightly and add the yeast and the teaspoon of sugar, let sit for five minutes until the yeast blooms.

3. While waiting, combine the all purpose four, whole wheat flour, cinnamon, and sugar into the bowl of your stand mixer. Mix to combine.

4. Add the egg, water, yeast, and milk mixture and mix well. Using the dough hook (or your hands if you are not using a stand mixer) knead the dough for 15-20 minutes, until the dough is smooth and elastic.

5. Cover the dough with a damp cloth and place in a warm place for 1 ½ hours for the dough to rise and double in size. In this time, you can make the filling and topping.

6. For the filling, mix together all ingredients except for the butter.

7. Rub, or cut, the butter into the mixture until it is relatively evenly dispersed and you have no clumps larger than the size of a cranberry.

8. For the streusel, combine all ingredients and, like the filling, cut the butter in until you get crumbs the size of pebbles.

9. Once risen, punch the dough down and reform it into a ball. Let sit, covered, for another 10 minutes.

10. To make the process more manageable, cut the dough into two equal portions.

11. Spray cupcake tin and preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Take one half of the dough and roll it into a large rectangle about 1/8 of an inch thick. Sprinkle half of the filling evenly over the rectangle, then cut the rectangle into smaller rectangles, roughly 2 inches wide and 4 inches long. Roll up the rectangles, maintaining the width, and seal the seam by pressing down on the dough. Coil the babka ropes into the cupcake pan. Repeat the process with the other half of the dough.

12. Once inside the cupcake tin, cover and let rise for a half hour. Brush with egg wash and sprinkle with streusel. Bake for 12-14 minutes. Once cool enough to touch pop them out and enjoy! They are best while still warm.

Also try: Not Your Bubbe’s Chicken Schnitzel

Sarah Miller is a graduate of the Pastry and Baking Arts program at the Institute of Culinary Education and is currently working at ABC Kitchen.

Gilad Shalit, the 25-year-old Israeli soldier released in October after five years in Hamas captivity, paid a visit to the Israeli set of Homeland, where the Showtime drama—which stars Claire Danes and Mandy Patinkin as CIA agents monitoring an American soldier released from al-Qaeda captivity—is currently filming its second season. Homeland is based on the Israeli show Hatufim.

Haaretz reports:

Gideon Raff, the writer-director of the Israel show invited Shalit to join the Homeland set Monday, and sat with him as he watched Danes do her takes, sitting in a tall director’s chair behind the Homeland writer-producer Howard Gordon and director Michael Cuesta. Raff was unable to invite Shalit to visit his set of Hatufiim, it turns out, because the last day of their filming took place on the very day Shalit was released.

(Photo credit: Jack Guez-Pool/Getty Images)

Battleship director Peter Berg turned the tables on an Israeli interviewer with a discussion about Israel that the reporter definitely wasn’t expecting.

“What the fuck is going to happen in Israel?” Berg asks, before going off on an impassioned, if scattered, tangent. “Its the most serious issue facing our planet right now,” he says, “Moreso than the movie Battleship.”

Inquiring whether the 25-year-old reporter served in the army (he didn’t), Berg asks if he was a draft dodger.

“You gotta join the army motherfucker,” he says, before saying the interviewer’s last name doesn’t sound Jewish (we learn that both of their fathers are Jewish).

We couldn’t tell you when Battleship is coming out (is it out already?), but we sure like seeing an American movie director go nuts about Israel.

(Photo credit: ROBYN BECK/AFP/GettyImages)

It’s as close to an ironclad rule as exists on The Wire: Maurice Levy (Michael Kostroff) always wins. Baltimore’s drug kingpins are both tough and smart, but in every brush with law enforcement, there’s Maury Levy—the slick, amoral, and Jewish lawyer—to choreograph the dealers’ defense, first for the Barksdale crew and later for Marlo Stanfield. In case after case, Levy demonstrates preternatural skill at helping his clients walk.

For those who have never seen the show, The Wire is auteur David Simon’s holistic meditation on the decay of urban America as seen through various lenses in contemporary Baltimore. Also, if you have not seen the show you should:

1. Stop reading this. I fully admit an obsession with the show, and will imminently spoil the hell out of it in highly technical fashion.
2. Go watch the show. Cease human contact until you are finished.

Back to Levy. He fascinates viewers in part because he seems to revel in amorality—as if he’s the most alive when he’s outfoxing the Major Crimes Unit and Assistant State’s Attorney Rhonda Pearlman. Kostroff may not have invented the shit-eating grin, but in Levy, he damn near perfects it.

Early in the series, Levy exudes a hectoring, schoolmarmish quality that leads to some memorable moments. When Barksdale frontman Orlando gets arrested for buying drugs from an undercover officer, Levy visits him in jail and makes him sign over ownership of the strip club—but not before leaving with this parting shot: “You wanted to be in the game, right? Well, now you’re in the game.” When D’Angelo Barksdale—held without charge—is convinced by Bunk and McNulty to write an apology letter to the made-up family of a murder victim, it’s Levy who steals the scene, barging in, dropping f-bombs, and smacking around Avon’s overmatched nephew.

Yet Levy is not just a skilled lawyer who provides his clients with the best defense possible; on several occasions, Levy actively engages in criminal conspiracy. With Orlando, Levy has the club forfeiture backdated to before the arrest. He later advises Marlo on how to launder money, and Levy probably knows Avon planted the “hot shots”—which killed his fellow inmates—on the corrupt guard in order to engineer his early release. Levy facilitates organized crime purely for personal profit.

That Abe Foxman has probably never watched The Wire is for the best, because through all of Levy’s underhanded dealings, the writers never allow us to forget that he is Jewish. Levy scolds McNulty for pulling him away from his home on a Friday night because “Yvette made brisket.” In one of his many told-you-so speeches, Levy chides Stringer Bell for getting scammed by Senator Clay Davis: “That gonov was born with his hand in someone’s pocket.”

Late in the series, Levy invites Herc for dinner, explaining, “you’re mishpoche now.” Though Jewish viewers may get a thrill from David Simon peppering his scripts with Yiddishisms, Levy’s Judaism is never seriously dealt with. In a story often lauded for the depth and nuance with which it treats its characters, Levy—at least from the perspective of his ethno-religious identity—remains a caricature: he’s a shyster, plain and simple.

Yet the caricatured Judaism is ultimately forgivable because Levy’s purpose—as with so many characters on the show—is to be part of Simon’s revelation and depiction of society’s intractable, systemic flaws. In what is arguably The Wire’s seminal scene, Levy cross-examines Omar during Bird’s trial, attempting to undermine Omar’s credibility as a witness because of his extensive criminal history. As Levy begins fulminating about Omar’s blight on society, Omar interrupts him: “Just like you, man.”

Levy whips around, taken aback, before Omar continues. “I got the shotgun; you got the briefcase—but it’s all in the game though, right?” It is Levy’s one moment of feebleness and shame, and he looks appropriately shell-shocked after trial. Omar’s line is as good a summary of The Wire as any: it is all part of the game, and everyone contributes to society’s endemic failures in his or her own way.

Levy never learns, though. After Marlo walks at series’ end, Levy is positively gleeful. When the other drug kingpins hear of his masterful work, he tells Herc, his client base will expand rapidly. Here again, Levy is the conduit for another of Simon’s subtle critiques: though we may be shown how we contribute to entrenched societal problems, it takes a certain courage to change what is both comfortable and in our narrow self-interest. Levy—like many characters on The Wire—doesn’t have that courage.

(photo credit: The Wire Wiki)

Previously on Network Jews:

Krusty the Clown from long-running animated classic The Simpsons

Annie Edison from NBC’s cult favorite Community

Schmidt from FOX’s breakout hit New Girl

Dov Friedman works in foreign policy in Ankara, Turkey. Like sportswriter Jason Whitlock, he has a childlike obsession with The Wire.

• Barbra Streisand has been approached about recording duets with pop heavy hitters like Rihanna and Adele (no word on Lea Michele), but first she’s filming a movie with Seth Rogen.

• Scott “Scooter” Braun, Justin Bieber’s Greenwich-bred, Emory-graduating manager, has a new gig with Universal Music Group, while little brother Adam is in the news for his non-profit, Pencils of Promise.

• SoHo’s newest tenant? A hip kosher restaurant called Jezebel.

• Real Estate website Curbed named this granny-chic, plastic-covered apartment the worst real estate listing in New York.

• Here are some kids reenacting the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” music video. They rule:

Zosia Mamet, the actress who plays the naive, jappy Shoshanna on HBO’s new show Girls, discussed just how bad dating really is last night on Conan. She also cursed a lot and called herself a weirdo. Swoon.

“I’m curious,” Conan says, “Is it that bad? Is dating in your 20s that bad?”
“It’s pretty fucking bad,” she responds. “In my experience, I haven’t found it to be particularly enjoyable.”

The kicker: “90 percent of the time when I go on dates,” Mamet says, “I find myself thinking, ‘I could be reading my book instead.’”

Back when I was in yeshiva high school, three-quarter length shirt sleeves were all the rage at the Gap. My friends and I joyously rifled through the racks at Brooklyn’s Kings Plaza branch of the store, thrilled to buy a piece of clothing that we could wear right off the hanger—no alterations required to meet modesty guidelines. It was a victory for female Orthodox Jewish shoppers in the late 90s.

I have no idea why the powers-that-be at the Gap and other stores decided that season that covered elbows were “in.” But my friends and I were grateful that, for once, we could shop in the same chain stores as the rest of the country and be part of what, in retrospect, was a really ugly moment in fashion history.

Another such moment is now upon us. As this BuzzFeed article observes, it has never been a better time to be a fashion forward Orthodox Jewish female. Decreed by designers, retailers, and trend-setters—reality TV star Olivia Palermo, stylist Rachel Zoe and the regal Kate Middleton among them—modesty (or tznius, as Ashkenazic Jews are wont to say) is officially back in style.

The necklines are higher and the hemlines longer. The fabrics are less clingy. It is finally possible for an Orthodox (or Mod-Ortho) Jewish girl to walk down the street and not be immediately identified as such, blending in with the rest of the young, hip set.

(I’ve got an internal chip that is like one of those police scanners but instead of picking up on the presence of a cop car, I can distinguish a skirt-wearing Orthodox girl from the general skirt-wearing population. Same goes for sheitels, the wigs that married Orthodox women wear. No matter how expensive they are, I can pick them out from a mile away. I’m like a bomb sniffing dog for wigs.)

Unlike many in the ultra-Orthodox and Hasidic camps, some more mainstream Orthodox folks do wish to be able to slip into the wider society every once in a while. Many go to secular colleges and are avid consumers of pop culture. They live tantalizingly close to the mainstream and though they put religious priorities above all else, they are still greatly affected by Madison Avenue. When congruous with religious law, they want to be part of American culture.

But designers are probably not responding to Orthodox girls’ deep seated desire to blend in. So this begs the question—what exactly is driving this current mainstream fashion trend to cover up?

I like to (wholly and unoriginally) call this the Brooklyn Hipster Effect. Though hipsters are much maligned and the term itself has practically become a punch line, certain fashion sensibilities of the Williamsburg kids have taken root and started to influence threads not found in a thrift store. Their sartorial challenge: I’m going to pilfer the racks of this secondhand shop for other people’s cast offs and layer practically to the point that it seems like I’m wearing my entire wardrobe all at once—and dare you to not find it sexy and alluring. And so far, it’s been working. No need for cleavage and knees here.

But can the influence of Brooklyn hipsters last forever? Odds are, no. Fashion is nothing if not constantly evolving. Some day real soon those aspiring artists will decide that overt is sexy and the plunging necklines and tight fitting clothing will return. And failing that, I’m sure that the spandex-loving 80s trend will reassert itself in, say, 2018. (Just a guess.)

So, frum girls, do as my circle of friends did all those years ago—stock up. Buy those skirts and blouses in every color and texture, because this too shall pass.

Dvora Meyers is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, Salon, Tablet and several other publications. She is the author of the essay collection Heresy on the High Beam: Confessions of an Unbalanced Jewess and blogs at Unorthodox Gymnastics. You can find Dvora on Twitter here.

• Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg turns 28 today. 28.

• A law suit alleges that a Jewish student at a Long Island high school was taunted with anti-Semitic slurs, which school administrators were aware of, and finally left the school.

• The story of how Jewish women took up the Chinese game of Mah Jongg.

• Shalhevet Schwartz was one of two girls who wore pants, not skirts, to compete in the National Bible Contest.

• Patricia Field did the costumes in these decade-inspired videos (and makes a cameo in this one), part of a Vidal Sassoon ad campaign in Japan:

• Mayim Bialik: mikvah spokeswoman.

• Rachel Shukert says John Travolta’s alleged assertion, revealed by a masseur in a lawsuit against Travolta, that Hollywood is controlled by “homosexual Jewish men,” is rooted in paranoia fueled by insecurity.

• Visiting Germany in 1958, Groucho Marx did the Charleston on the bunker where Hitler committed suicide.

• Sean Penn plays Jewish gangster Mickey Cohen in the absurd-looking new movie, Gangster Squad. Also, Ryan Gosling!

• What happens after the tape stops rolling on NPR’s “Fresh Air:”

The New York Post’s Page Six reports that Drake, fresh off getting re-bar mitzvahed in his latest music video, is dating Parks and Recreation actress Rashida Jones. Jones, the daughter of Peggy Lipton and Quincy Jones, was recently seen calling out Mel Gibson for hating Jews on Andy Cohen’s live late-night Bravo talk show, which made us like her even more.

According to Page Six:

A source tells the magazine that Drake, whose given name is Aubrey Graham, met Jones at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and that the two have been quietly dating ever since.

“She wants them to go public, but he’s reluctant,” the source says, despite their reps saying they are just friends.

The article also links Drake to Tyra Banks, but we’re having a hard time buying that the pair, eating frozen yogurt at Disneyland—where the supermodel was “uncharacteristically dressed down in jeans and a grey T-shirt, with very little makeup”—were really on a date. Disneyland? Drake has so much more game than that.

If (fingers crossed) this Drake/Rashida thing is real, what will we call them? Drashida? More important—what will we name their hypothetical future Jewish babies?

Previously:
It’s Drake’s re-Bar Mitzvah, and You’re Invited!
Rashida Jones Skillfully Describes How Mel Gibson Feels About Jews

(Photo credits, from left: Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images; David Livingston/Getty Images)