Passport & Plate - Baba-au-Rhum
Ingredients
Ingredients for 12 cakes:
• The dough
50 grams of dried raisins
150 ml rhum
225 grams of white flour
1 spoon of sugar (crystal sugar)
a pich of salt
7grams of yeast
3 eggs
25 grams of sweet butter
• The syrup
300 ml water
225 grams of brown sugar
the rhum resulted after raisins’ maceration
the grated peel and the juice of a lemon
Jamaican pepper
a pinch of saffron pistils
• Decoration
fresh raspberry
bitter chocolate flakes
• Dishes required
12 silicone dariole forms
2 wide and deep trays
1 cooking pot (for preparing the syrup)
How to prepare this recipePreparing the dough
1. macerate the dried raisins in rhum. I like to use Cuban rhum, mostly Havana Club. In my opinion, the best taste you can get is by using the 7 years Havana Club, but if you don’t have it, you can use another type.
2. put the flour, the sugar, the pinch of salt and the yeast (cut it to small pieces) in a bowl and mix them all.
3. add the eggs (beat them in a separate dish before adding them) and the butter (also cut into smaller pieces) to the mix and stir very well until everything reaches homogeneity. Use a mixer. It's better than doing it by hand.
4. start preheating the oven to 180C.
5. Take out the raisins from the rhum and add them to the mix. Do save the rhum for later. Don’t throw it away.
6. have the dariole silicone forms ready and with a spoon start filling them with the dough. Once this is done, cover them with wet table cloth and let the dough ferment at room temperature for 15-20 mins. Be careful. If it runs over the margins of your dariole form, just take the top off. It should not grow over the margins.
7. once the fermentation is completed, put the darioles in one of your trays and insert the tray into the oven. Leave it there for roughly 10 minutes. Afterwards, take the tray out and get the baked cakes out of the darioles. Place them on a dish.
Preparing the syrup
8. Grate a lemon. Once all the peel has been grated, cut the lemon into two and squeeze the juice. In a cooking pot, put the water, the sugar and the rhum resulted after soaking the raisins. Add the grated lemon peel and juice. I also like to put some grounded or crushed Jamaican pepper. Take a few pepper grains (7-8 is ok). Either ground them or crush them with the lower round side of a wooden spoon. Add half teaspoon of saffron pistils. Put the pot on fire and keep stirring until the mixture reaches its boiling point. Cook it over a low fire. See that the sugar blends in perfectly. Do not overboil.
What's next?
9. once the syrup is ready and hot, pour it in the other tray and then soak the baked babas in it. Keep rolling them regularly so that they soak uniformly. As they absorb the syrup you will notice how they grow, increasing their volume.
10. once soaked, you can take a cake, put it on a plate. Place some of the lemon peel from the syrup on top of it. Use some fresh raspberry for decoration and place it near the cake. You can also spread some bitter chocolate flakes around the baba and on the top of the raspberries.
The story behind this recipeBetween history and legend, this story takes us to the 18th century’s Paris, to the Royal court of France, the very place of birth of many sweets, a place where royal chefs were known to face severe punishments if they did not manage to raise up to the monarchs’ culinary expectations. Yet, this cake was not born there. Versailles was just the court where it became famous.
Baba- au-rhum was the creation of the Polish king Stanislas Leszczynski, a gourmand royal. The typical Polish babka yeast cake was never quite to his taste, being too dry and plain for his expectations. It was thus that he came up with the idea of adding rhum, raisins and even a pinch of saffron to it. New ingredients, fancy taste and a new name: Baba. It was the name of the king’s favourite hero from “One thousand and one nights”, Ali Baba.
As the king’s daughter Maria married the French monarch Louis XV, king Stanislas found refuge in France once forced into exile. One of his pâtissiers, Nicolas Stohrer became the queen’s pâtissier, not only to serve her wishes but also to later open his own patisserie in Paris. The royal dessert gained notoriety and delighted more and more people.
Modern days brought it no less popularity. Baba-au- rhum is one of the most appreciated cakes, being it in Michelin- starred restaurants or in cozy, little eating places. My first experience with Baba was in such a hidden place, in a medieval town called Côtes de Bourg hidden between castles and vineyards. Notorious for its wine, it is also a burg of romantic beauty. The taste of Baba makes me remember the tiny and narrow streets, the smells of the cheese market, the numerous old buildings marked with ‘cave à vins’, the old castle and its romantic garden where I enjoyed an extraordinary view to the river. And then I climbed up all those stairs, just to reach the old public washing basin where women were doing laundry during the middle ages. It is filled with water as if it were still waiting for them to come.
