Babka. Just the word make me hungry. I love a good chocolate babka (although even the best babka doesn’t hold a havadalah candle to a Zomick’s Meltaway). Whenever we go into NYC (really LI) it’s like babkapalooza for me. Or, at the very least, a babka on Shabbos. Two Shabbosim on the Coast, means two Babkas! A third Shabbos means…you get the idea. Regular or sugar-free, it doesn’t matter as long as it’s good (and their sugar-free cinnamon babka is killer).

On a previous vacation I purchased a chocolate babka for Shabbos Kodesh. Who made babka or where I purchased it isn’t important. I was happy to have a babka! Shabbos morning after I davened, I was ready to dig in! I cut a slick, chunk, section, sliver, portion, call it what you like, made by bracha and took a bite.

GOOD NIGHT!! GEVALT! I couldn’t believe what I was tasting.

Salt.

Not an overpowering amount of salt. But the chocolate babka was a shtickel salty. I was shocked.

Then I smiled. Not everything thing home-made or bakery-made should always come out the same. It’s a fresh made babka, not some frozen babka (not that I know of any). The fact that it was a little salty only reminded me that someone made it. Life is full of mistakes. Miss-calculations do occur when measuring salt. I’ve made mistakes before. I’ve never actually sold a mistake I’ve made to anyone as a delicious treat for Shabbos Kodesh, but I’ve made mistakes.

In fact, I remember thinking, I actually appreciated the babka more, knowing that it wasn’t exactly perfect.

Sometimes the babka we eat is salty. Sometimes things do not turn out the way we’d like them to. Sometimes what we bake doesn’t turn out the way we plan it to. There’s always another babka.