Baba au Rhum
INGREDIENTS for good-sized cake. -1 lb. of flour, 6 oz. of butter, 6 eggs, 1/2 oz. of German yeast, 2 oz. of sugar, 1/4 lb. of raisins or sultanas, 1/4 lb. of currants, 2 oz. of candied peel, salt. For sauce, 1/4 pint of rum, 1/2 pot of apricot jam, 4 oz. of sugar, pint of water. AVERAGE COST, 38.
Make a sponge of 1/4 lb. of flour, the yeast, warm water and a little salt. Mix the rest of the ingredients in a large basin, adding the eggs one by one, and beating the mixture thoroughly with the hand till it is light and full of bubbles. When the sponge is risen, which should be in from 1 to 2 hours, mix the two and beat again.
Butter a tin, put in the cake and set to the fire. When it has risen to twice its size, bake it in a good oven and turn it out. make the sauce, boil the water and sugar to a syrup, add the jam and strain, put in the rum, let it get quite hot, and serve poured over the baba.
TIME.-2 hours to rise.
SEASONABLE in winter.
To
A yeast-raised, fruited baba soaked in hot rum syrup, mixed by hand in the old manner. The dough is closer to a rich brioche batter than a cake batter, and it must be beaten long enough to build gluten.
- German yeast"German yeast" is compressed fresh baker's yeast; 1/2 oz. is about 14 g. Substitute roughly 5 g of instant dried yeast (fresh to instant is commonly reckoned at about three to one), or less if the dough will be left to rise slowly.
- The sponge stageSlurry 4 oz. of the flour with the yeast, a little salt and enough blood-warm water to make a soft batter, and let it bubble for 1 to 2 hours before it meets the enriched mixture. Skipping the sponge leaves the heavy egg-and-butter dough without enough leavening power.
- Beat until it blistersThe instruction to beat with the hand until "light and full of bubbles" is the hinge of the recipe. Ten minutes by hand, or 6 to 8 minutes in a mixer with a dough hook, until the dough is glossy and pulls away from the bowl in strands.
- "Set to the fire" and a good ovenProving beside the hearth means a warm spot, well short of oven heat; the tin should be loosely covered so the surface does not skin. The book specifies only "a good oven", with no temperature; on modern equipment that is generally taken as moderately hot, and a large ring or loaf tin will want roughly 35 to 45 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean.
- Butter and flour the tinA rich, sticky yeast dough grips metal. Butter generously and dust with flour, or line the base, and turn the baba out while still warm so the syrup can soak in from all sides.
- The syrupThe water quantity has lost its fraction in this printing; half a pint (10 fl oz British, about 1 1/4 US cups) to 4 oz. sugar is a plausible reading, though the original figure cannot be recovered. "Half a pot" of apricot jam would be about 8 oz. if the pot is the usual 1 lb. Boil the water and sugar to a syrup, stir in the jam and strain; the recipe then adds the rum and heats the sauce through before serving.
- Soaking, not just pouringPrick the warm cake and spoon the hot syrup over in several rounds, letting each be absorbed. Poured on all at once at the table it runs off and the crumb stays dry.
- Yield and costA pound of flour with this enrichment makes a large baba serving 8 to 10. The printed average cost is in pre-decimal shillings and has no modern meaning.
Baba au rhum belongs to the family of yeast-leavened, spirit-soaked cakes that reached French pastry from Central Europe; the name is generally traced to Polish baba, a word for an old woman, applied to the tall fluted cakes of that tradition, and the rum-soaking step is usually credited to Parisian pastry cooks of the nineteenth century, though the attribution is traditional rather than documented. In a British household book of Mrs Beeton's line the dish sits at the border between bread and pudding: it is mixed with baker's yeast and proved twice like a bun, then sauced and served hot as a sweet, and the entry marks it "seasonable in winter." The apricot glaze strained into the syrup is the same trick used to finish tarts, and it gives the sauce body as well as flavour.