A few weeks ago I got an email whose sender was looking for the recipe of kokosh cake. I couldn’t help her instantly, as I had never heard of it before. After browsing several websites I realized that kokosh cake is the lesser-known, flatter, denser, less attractive Hungarian sibling of the world-famous babka cake. Kokosh cake, which translates to kakaós kalács, is a traditional pastry among Hungarian Jews, and it’s baked for Sabbath.

Kokosh cake is a cocoa filled yeast dough roll. Some recipes use a plain mixture of cocoa powder and sugar, others call for some oil to make the filling creamy. This cocoa filling is often enriched with ground poppy seeds, and I have found recipes that also add orange juice to the filling. I filled the first roll with only cocoa, and for the second roll I combined cocoa with ground poppy seeds and homemade marmalade. (Source of the recipe: szombat.org)