The summer is ending, the kids are back in school and the rest of us have returned to work. But it’s not all gloom when we can bring a little sunshine back into our lives with a flavoursome treat. So, to ease the changing of the seasons we at the Colette are pleased to offer you our recipe for rum baba. Make, indulge and enjoy!
Thank you, Stanislaus
First, we want to tip the old chef’s hat to the person who is credited with the idea of soaking a cake in an alcoholic drink. He was King Stanislaus of Poland who, finding the gugelhupf served to him to be too dry, poured his glass of Malaga wine over it. The idea was taken up by Nicolas Stohrer, pastry chef to Marie, the daughter of Stanislaus and wife of Louis XV, who substituted rum for wine.
Let's go to the dough
Now the ingredients: 1kg of flour, 20g of salt, 70g of sugar, 50g of organic yeast, 6 eggs, 350g of warm water and 250g of butter. Got everything?
Knead together the flour, salt, sugar and eggs. Add warm water and yeast while continuing to knead. Stir in the melted butter at the end of the kneading and let stand for 10 minutes. Butter and garnish the moulds, let the mixture rest at 35 ° C and bake at 180 ° C. Remove from the moulds as soon as it comes out of the oven.
Add some syrup!
Mix 300g of sugar with 1 litre of water, cook for 10 minutes and add, off the heat, 15cl of amber rum. Cool and pour it on the baba as soon as it leaves the oven. After about ten minutes, turn it over to soak the other side. The cake can be served with seasonal fruits and whipped cream.
In conclusion...
“In fact, of ‘favourite dishes’, I prefer ... All that is good, all that makes the meal time a little party of the taste buds and the spirit.” So spoke the French novelist Colette who, we bet, would have loved our baba!
