Rum Baba
Surely one of the icons of Italian pastry is the baba, a typical sweet of the Neapolitan tradition, although few know that it actually has Polish origins.
It is a leavened dough with a characteristic mushroom shape that, once baked, is immersed in a warm liquid which can be sugar syrup, limoncello or other liqueurs, although the baba par excellence is the Rum Baba.
Not being a big fan of liqueur-based desserts, I was never attracted to them and would never have dreamed of attempting this preparation, also because it seemed to me to be a recipe, to say the least, complicated.
Then, when you least expect it, you receive as a birthday gift from a dear friend who knows your passion for the blog and cooking many little items including… baba molds, and what do you do? Don’t you want to try them?
Just follow the instructions step by step, it’s absolutely not complicated and you’ll see they will turn out perfectly.
Ideal as the finale of a dinner because they combine the dessert moment with the digestif.
I recommend you try them and if you like them there is also the Limoncello version here on
A Tavola con Tea.
- Difficulty: Medium
- Cost: Medium
- Preparation time: 25 Minutes
- Cooking time: 25 Minutes
- Portions: 24 babas
- Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients
- cups Manitoba (strong) flour
- Milk
- 7 tbsp Butter
- 1/3 cup Sugar
- oz Fresh baker's yeast (about 1 packet active dry yeast equivalent)
- 6 Eggs
- 1 pod Vanilla
- 1 pinch Salt
- Butter (for molds)
- 2 1/2 cups Sugar
- 1 1/4 cups Rum
- cups Water
- Orange peel
- Lemon peel
Preparation
Let’s start by preparing the soaking syrup.
Take an untreated orange and an untreated lemon, grate them and obtain the zest. Put the water together with the sugar and the orange and lemon zests in a tall, narrow pot.
Bring to a boil — you’ll see the sugar will have dissolved in the meantime. Turn off the heat, add the rum, cover the pot with a lid and let it rest.Now let’s make the babas.
First dissolve the fresh yeast in the warmed milk into which you have put the seeds of the vanilla pod.
In a large bowl, place the Manitoba flour, the sugar, the softened butter and the yeast dissolved in the milk with the vanilla seeds, and knead for 5 minutes until you obtain a soft but firm dough.
At this point begin adding the eggs to the dough one at a time.
Do not add another until the previous one has been completely absorbed, and so on until the last egg is incorporated.
Continue kneading until the mixture becomes smooth, homogeneous and elastic.
Then form a ball and let it rest covered with plastic wrap until doubled in size (this will take about 45–50 minutes depending on room temperature).Meanwhile prepare the specific baba molds (they are now sold almost everywhere; I recommend the disposable ones). I used molds about 2 3/8 inches high with a 2-inch diameter.
When the dough has risen, take it and deflate it slightly.
Take a little dough with your hands and form balls weighing about 2 to 2.5 ounces each (about 60–70 g) and place them in the molds (fill them about 2/3 full).
Once all the babas are prepared, let them rise one last time until they are nicely puffed and have reached the rim of the mold (about 1–1½ hours).
Now you’re ready to bake.Bake in a preheated convection oven at 352 °F for about 25 minutes.
Once baked, take them out of the oven and let them cool; then remove them from the molds and fully soak them in the syrup.
When they are well soaked, remove them from the syrup with a slotted spoon and place them on a rack so they can drip off a little excess liquid.
Here are your babas! Serve them plain or accompanied by whipped cream or pastry cream.
Notes
If you don’t eat them right away, store them in the refrigerator in a well-sealed container. Baked but unsoaked baba keeps in the fridge for up to a week or in the freezer for 1 month.
Already soaked baba, however, keeps in the refrigerator in an airtight container for 3–4 days, and you can also freeze it, in which case it will keep for 1 month.
