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Baba Au Rhum
Take a quarter of a pound of fine flour; make a cavity in the centre, and stir into it half an ounce of German yeast, previously dissolved in a little tepid water. Mix and roll into a ball. Wrap this in a cloth loosely, and leave it in a fairly warm place until it has risen to quite twice its original size. Next take three-quarters of a pound of well-dried and sifted self-raising flour. Add to it a good pinch of salt, half a pound of butter in small pieces, one ounce of sifted sugar, and three or four well-beaten eggs, one at a time. Mix lightly, but thoroughly, then add the ball of yeast, together with five beaten eggs, one at a time, and two ounces each of chopped sultanas and candied peel or citron. Knead the paste very thoroughly, and place it in a mould sufficiently large to admit of its swelling considerably. Leave it in a warm place until it has risen to the top of the mould. Then bake in a moderate oven till done. Turn out carefully, saturate with the following syrup, and leave till cold, then serve.
THE SYRUP.--Empty the contents of a nine-penny bottle of apricot syrup into a small enamelled stewpan. Add to it half its quantity of old Jamaica rum, and bring gently to boiling point. Then use as directed above. Probable cost, 2s.
This is a full yeast-risen baba built on a sponge, not a quick cake, and the enriched dough behaves more like a thick batter than a bread dough. A few of the instructions need translating before you start.
- German yeast"German yeast" is fresh compressed yeast, sold in blocks. Half an ounce is about 14 g fresh, equivalent to roughly 7 g (2 1/4 tsp) active dried or about 5 g instant; if using instant, mix it straight into the flour for the sponge rather than dissolving it in water.
- The self-raising flourSelf-raising flour of this period may not have behaved identically to the modern product, and here it is working alongside live yeast. Plain flour gives a cleaner, more reliable crumb; if you use self-raising, do not add extra baking powder.
- Weights in metricQuarter pound flour is 115 g, three-quarters pound 340 g, butter half a pound 225 g, one ounce sugar 28 g, two ounces each sultanas and peel 55 g. Total eggs are eight or nine, which with that much butter makes a very slack dough.
- Kneading a batter"Knead the paste very thoroughly" means beating and slapping it until it is elastic and pulls away from the bowl in sheets. A stand mixer with the dough hook, eight to ten minutes, does this better than hands. Do not add flour to firm it up.
- The mouldUse a ring or savarin tin, or a tall charlotte mould, buttered well and filled no more than halfway. The second rise should bring the dough just to the rim, which will take an hour or more given the fat content.
- Moderate oven350F / 180C. A large baba needs 35 to 45 minutes; cover loosely with foil once the top has coloured, since the sugar and butter brown early. It is done when a skewer comes out clean and the internal temperature is around 195F / 90C.
- The apricot syrupA "nine-penny bottle" is not a measurement we can recover with confidence; it was probably somewhere around half a pint. Aim for about 300 ml of apricot syrup, or sieved apricot jam let down with water to a pourable consistency, plus about 150 ml of dark rum.
- SoakingThe hinge of the dish. Pour the hot syrup over the baba while the cake is still warm, in stages, letting each addition sink in before the next. A cold cake and cold syrup will pool at the bottom and leave the crumb dry.
- YieldA baba on this scale serves ten to twelve. Bringing the syrup briefly to the boil drives off only some of the alcohol; a good deal remains in the finished cake, so bear that in mind if serving children.
The baba belongs to a family of yeast-risen, syrup-soaked cakes that travelled west from Poland into France in the eighteenth century, and the name is generally traced to Polish babka, a word for an old woman, said to describe the cake's tall fluted shape. The rum soaking is traditionally credited to the exiled Polish king Stanislaw Leszczynski and his Lorraine court, though that story is repeated far more often than it is documented; the Paris pastry house Stohrer, founded by a baker from that court, has long claimed the dish. By the time Cassell's compiled its dictionary, the baba and its close relation the savarin were fixtures of the English dinner-table dessert course, and the recipe here reflects that: French technique, a bottled commercial fruit syrup from the grocer, and "old Jamaica rum" from the Empire's sugar colonies, with the whole thing priced at two shillings for the household accounts.