Rum Cakes
Shape Brioche dough in the form of large biscuits and put into buttered individual tin moulds, having moulds two-thirds full; cover, and let rise to fill moulds. Bake twenty-five minutes in a moderate oven. Remove from moulds and dip in Rum Sauce. Arrange on a dish and pour remaining sauce around cakes. 1/2 cup sugar
A baba au rhum under a plainer name: enriched yeast dough baked small, then soaked in rum syrup. The recipe assumes you already have brioche dough and a rum sauce on hand, and the printed text breaks off mid-way into the sauce.
- The truncated sauceThe trailing "1/2 cup sugar" appears to be the first line of the Rum Sauce recipe that follows, the page having been cut short. The sauce itself is not reproduced here, so its proportions and method are unknown; sauces of this kind are generally a sugar syrup flavoured with rum.
- Moderate ovenConventionally read as somewhere around 350F, though the book gives no figure. Small enriched cakes may be done before the full twenty-five minutes in a modern oven; pull them when the tops are deep gold and a skewer comes out clean.
- Individual tin mouldsDariole moulds or a standard muffin tin. Buttered popover cups also work. Two-thirds full before the second rise, as written, is right.
- The hinge: dip them warmTurn the cakes out and dip them while still hot, into warm syrup. Cold cake and cold syrup sit on the surface; hot cake drinks. Give each one 20 to 30 seconds, turning, then lift it out to drain.
- Brioche doughA butter-and-egg-rich yeast dough, made by the book's own separate recipe. Chilled dough is easier to shape into the "large biscuits" the recipe calls for, but check the brioche recipe itself for its resting instructions.
- Second rise"Let rise to fill moulds" means an increase of roughly half again, since the moulds start two-thirds full. Timing will depend on the temperature of the dough and the room. Covered, so a skin does not form.
- AlcoholThe rum is added in the sauce rather than baked, so the cakes will carry uncooked spirit, though the sauce recipe is not reproduced here. Not suitable for children.
The dish is a domesticated baba au rhum, the yeast cake soaked in spirit syrup that French pastry cooks are generally said to have been making since the early nineteenth century and that Parisian bakers sold under the name baba. Farmer drops the French name and rebuilds the thing from a brioche dough her readers already had a recipe for, changes that lose the French name but reduce a restaurant dish to components a home cook can assemble.