Baba au Rhum (French Rum-Soaked Yeast Cake)
Baba au rhum traces to 18th-century Poland, where King Stanislaw Leszczynski supposedly dipped a dry kugelhopf cake in rum and named it after Ali Baba from One Thousand and One Nights. The dessert migrated to Paris through Naples, where French patissiers refined it into the small, cylindrical yeast cakes known today. The dough is enriched with butter and eggs, producing a tender, open crumb riddled with air pockets that act as reservoirs for the soaking syrup. After baking, the cakes are submerged in a hot rum syrup - sugar, water, and dark rum in generous proportion - until they swell to nearly double their size and the syrup reaches the center. The texture is spongy and saturated, releasing a warm rush of rum with each bite. A rosette of crème chantilly - lightly sweetened, vanilla-scented whipped cream - sits on top, its cold airiness contrasting the dense, boozy cake beneath. The alcohol is deliberate and undisguised, making this a distinctly adult dessert.
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Instructions
- 1
Make an enriched yeast dough with butter; pour into molds and bake.
- 2
Make a simple syrup and let it cool slightly.
- 3
Stir rum into the syrup.
- 4
Submerge the warm cakes in the rum syrup until fully soaked.
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