It's All Marinka's Fault

So I'm sitting here, sipping coffee and munching toast and promising myself that I'll only read blogs until my fried eggs are all gone, when blamo! there it is, Marinka going on and on about Entenmann's and how their website is so hypnotic, especially if you are home in bed, feeling all hypochondriacal sick with a summer cold.

Ever the sucker for allure of baked goods, and mildly nostalgic about my childhood adoration of all things Entenmann's, I of course go to the site, and yes, it really is mesmerizing. (Go ahead, click over. And when you're fully hypnotized by swirling pastries, come on back.)

The giant tag line under the carousel of sugary goodness reads "Everyone's got a favorite. What's yours?" and immediately I think BABKA! with more than a little glee. Honestly, I couldn't describe babka as a food in any kind of detail at all. Babka is the sweet Entenmann's treat you get on the special occasion when you visit your Jewish grandparents in New York. Babka is not breakfast or lunch, not dessert or danish, but something sweet and pastry-ish, perhaps with some jam or some cheese or some chocolate--you don't know--that tastes perfectly of Things Not Usually Allowed On Your Plate At This Time Of Day, Young Lady. Babka is toothsome and wonderful, packaged in that long white box with the fancy navy blue letters, and carefully chosen by you and your father to have for breakfast the next morning with your scrambled eggs--a secret delight that Mommy would never allow but won't know about because this is your weekend to stay with Daddy.

Obviously, I read "Everyone's got a favorite. What's yours?" and I immediately typed "babka" into the Entenmann's search box. Entenmann's told me:

Your Search Results

Sorry, there are no results that match your search criteria.

So, I Googled babka, thinking that it was probably a Yiddish word that had some hidden "h" in it or something, and that if only Google could tell me how to spell it, Entenmann's would hand me the pastry of my youth.

And that's when it got really weird. First of all, I was spelling it right, but my indignation that Entenmann's would stop carrying what was clearly the best pastry it ever produced was quickly eclipsed by what came up in the search results.

Several problems are immediately apparent. First, the confection is described as "a very tall, delicate yet rich yeast-risen cake," which, if you've ever seen the Entenmann's boxes in my mind's eye (or on my grocery store shelves) makes no sense at all. How does a "very tall" cake get into one of those distinctive long, low boxes, the shape of which I so vividly remember carrying?

Second, babka is almost schizophrenically described as a "Jewish recipe" and as a "traditional Polish Easter cake" in alternating entries on the list of Google hits. Both camps seem quite firm in their designation. Yet while there were historically a lot of Jewish people in Poland, I'm pretty sure they rarely baked special cakes for Easter, so this is a somewhat baffling Old World traditional food.

So, what exactly am I blaming on Marinka? The fact that I have spent the last half hour researching babka instead of grading MA exams, certainly. And the longing and mournful feeling I have inside because I will apparently never taste an Entenmann's babka again. I think it's probably stretching things too far to say that it's Marinka's fault that Entenmann's discontinued babka; probably, they don't carry it any more because they couldn't figure out whether to market it at Easter or to Jewish grandmothers who like something sweet baked into their bread. However, I give her credit for the disquieting feeling I have that perhaps I NEVER tasted an Entenmann's babka because very tall cake + very short box = one of those invented memories that people sometimes discover they have forty years after the fact, once they've spent all that time feeling bitter about something their little sister said to them on Christmas Day back in 1969, only to discover that on Christmas Day in 1969, that particular sister was recovering from laryngitis and couldn't talk at all.

Also, the more research I've done, I've discovered that it's really not a cake so much as a brioche. And that it is typically graced with chocolate. Which goes a long way towards explaining my own intense love of all things bread-with-chocolate. (Even though I still have a vague idea that we ate cheese babka or fruit babka as children.)

So, basically, anyone out there who loves Marinka as much as I do (and I really do adore her) needs to come to her rescue and vindicate my memories. DID Entenmann's used to sell babka? Was it short? Can babka have things in it besides chocolate? Is it bread or cake? Am I crazy?

And, for good measure, if you can diagnose Marinka's Sudden Onset Summer Illness, I would be very grateful (as, I'm sure, would she). I would be very very sorry to lose her to the Slow Withering Away with Inferior Pastry that is her current fate.