In a first-person recipe column for Walla, Ines Shilat Yanai says she began volunteering after October 7 and adopted two companies serving on the northern border. She and others brought food and supplies to the soldiers, visited them in the field, and shared coffee and stories in what she describes as an emotional, unifying experience.
While baking for those visits, she wanted a chocolate yeast cake that would stay soft and pleasant for days. After several attempts, she found a surprisingly effective ingredient from Asian cooking: coconut cream, not coconut water or coconut milk. She says it gives the dough exceptional softness and sweetness without dominating the flavor, and became the key to the recipe.
Yanai says the cake was always the first thing finished and earned the compliment, “a cake that tastes like home.” She presents it as a chocolate yeast krantz with what she calls “the softest dough in the world.” The filling includes melted butter, sugar, cocoa, canola oil and cinnamon, plus 200 grams of chocolate spread. The dough itself uses 4 cups flour, 1.5 tablespoons dry yeast, 100 grams sugar, 100 grams butter, 2 eggs, 1 cup coconut cream and vanilla.
The method calls for kneading, a two-hour room-temperature rise or overnight refrigeration, then rolling, filling, chilling, twisting, proofing for about 25 minutes and baking at 180 degrees Celsius for about 30 minutes. After baking, the loaf is brushed generously with a sugar syrup made from sugar, water and lemon juice, which she says adds wonderful moisture to each bite.
