Baba au rhum
The Polish king Stanisław Leszczyński is said to have dipped a dry cake in wine, beginning a story Parisian pastry cooks refined into today's form. The baba must be dry and light as a sponge before it meets the syrup — a moist one absorbs very little. The second rule is temperature: warm syrup, a lukewarm or cold baba. A hot baba in hot syrup falls apart in your hands.
Your own work in that: 15 min.
- Dough 20 min
- Rising 90 min
- Baking 22 min
- Drying 60 min
- Soaking 15 min
Step by step
0 / 8 doneBeat the dough until it pulls into strands
Dissolve the yeast in the milk, add the flour, eggs, sugar and salt and beat by hand or machine for 10 minutes, until the dough leaves the sides and stretches in strands. It is as sticky as thick cream and should stay so.
Ingredients: 250 g strong bread flour · 4 pcs eggs · 12 g fresh yeast · 40 ml milk · 20 g sugar · ½ tsp salt · 90 g butter
It pulls into strands — the stickiness is correct.Beat in the lukewarm butter last
Pour in the lukewarm butter and beat 3 minutes more until fully absorbed. Hot butter scalds the yeast, and added at the start it hinders the gluten that gives a baba its sponge structure.
Ingredients: 250 g strong bread flour · 4 pcs eggs · 12 g fresh yeast · 40 ml milk · 20 g sugar · ½ tsp salt · 90 g butter
Fill the moulds halfway
Butter 8 baba or dariole moulds (about 150 ml) and fill them only halfway — with a piping bag, as the dough is too sticky for a spoon. The dough doubles and should rise above the rim.
Ingredients: 250 g strong bread flour · 4 pcs eggs · 12 g fresh yeast · 40 ml milk · 20 g sugar · ½ tsp salt · 90 g butter
Rise until the dough domes over the moulds
Cover and leave somewhere warm 60–90 minutes, until the dough rises above the rims. Underproved babas come out dense and will not absorb syrup — their pores are what later take up all the liquid.
Ingredients: 250 g strong bread flour · 4 pcs eggs · 12 g fresh yeast · 40 ml milk · 20 g sugar · ½ tsp salt · 90 g butter
Above the rim — those pores will take up the syrup.Bake to deep gold
Bake 20–22 minutes at 190°C, until deep gold. Turn out and dry on a rack at least an hour, ideally overnight. A fresh, moist baba disintegrates in syrup.
Ingredients: 250 g strong bread flour · 4 pcs eggs · 12 g fresh yeast · 40 ml milk · 20 g sugar · ½ tsp salt · 90 g butter
Make the syrup, rum off the heat
Boil the water with the sugar, orange peel and vanilla for 5 minutes, take off the heat and only then add the rum. Boiled rum loses most of its aroma. Before soaking, let the syrup cool to warm, about 60°C.
Ingredients: 700 ml water · 350 g sugar · 1 pcs orange · 1 pcs vanilla pod · 150 ml dark rum
Soak the babas in warm syrup
Immerse the babas in batches in warm, not hot, syrup, turning, for 2–3 minutes, until visibly swollen and heavy — all of them take about a quarter of an hour. A gently squeezed baba should release syrup like a sponge.
Ingredients: 700 ml water · 350 g sugar · 1 pcs orange · 1 pcs vanilla pod · 150 ml dark rum
Until swollen and heavy — like a sponge.Glaze, split and fill with cream
Drain on a rack, brush with warmed apricot jam, split lengthways and fill with whipped cream sweetened with icing sugar. Paris bistros often set the rum bottle on the table — everyone splashes their baba again.
Ingredients: 300 ml whipping cream (36%) · 30 g icing sugar · 3 tbsp apricot jam · 50 ml dark rum
Before you start
A stale baba is better
A baba baked the day before absorbs syrup far better than a fresh one. Paris patisseries bake them ahead and keep them on racks somewhere dry. One of the few cakes that improve by drying out.
A savarin is the same baba
A savarin is the identical dough baked in a ring mould, without raisins, filled with fruit or cream. Babas traditionally had raisins; today the Parisian version usually leaves them out.
Two days once soaked
Soaked babas keep two days in the fridge in an airtight box. Dry, unsoaked ones keep a week in a tin. Always add the cream just before serving.
