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Rum Baba

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Prep

10 mins

Bake

30-40 mins

Serves

8 to 10

Difficulty

Medium

About

This fluffy cake is soaked in a fragrant rum syrup, giving it the right balance of sweetness. But although most believe to have originated in France, babas are a derivation of a Polish cake. They then made their way to Naples, at the court of the Italian monarchy, where they were deemed the king of desserts. Served simply in syrup, I decorated mine with a mascarpone chantilly cream and fresh fruit, dusted with icing sugar.

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Instructions
Ingredients
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Step 1

In the bowl of a stand-up mixer, add your flour, sugar and fresh yeast previously crumbled.

Step 2

With the paddle attachment, on a low speed, mix all ingredients to make sure they are well combined.

Step 3

Add your eggs in two times. Wait for the first to be absorbed, before adding the remaining eggs and the vanilla paste. Bring your speed to medium.

Step 4

Once the dough is well combined and starts attaching to the paddle, add all the salt and finally the butter in three times, waiting for the previous to be absorbed completely. Use a spatula to clean the sides of the bowl if necessary.

Step 5

Place the rich dough into the chosen container that has been previously buttered, and let it rise until reaches the borders.

Step 6

Place in a preheated static oven at 180° C/Gas Mark 4 and bake until golden brown and a wooden skewers comes out clean.

For the rum sugar syrup ‘bagna’

Step 1

Place half of the water, all the sugar, and the orange peel into a saucepan and bring to a gentle simmer until the sugar is all dissolved.

Step 2

Take the saucepan off the heat and add the remaining water to bring the temperature down. Only when the sugar syrup mix is warm, add your rum.

Step 1

As the baba is still warm, start pouring the syrup over numerous times, until you feel that this yeasted cake is literally heavy and soaked.

Step 2

Serve as is with a dust of icing sugar, or decorate with your favourite topping of cream and fresh fruit.

TOP TIP

Instead of rum, why not trying a limoncello syrup? Perfect for summer.

Ingredients – 8 items

Serving

1

Flour

Manitoba flour

also known as Canadian flour

300 g
Pure Cane Caster Sugar

Caster sugar

35 g

Fresh Yeast

depends on the external temperature

5 to 12 g
Salt

Sea salt flakes

6 g
Vanilla

Vanilla paste

10 g
Butter

Unsalted butter, softened

75 g
Eggs

Medium eggs

5
Orange-zest

Orange zest

Grated

For the syrup

Water

Water

500 g
Pure Cane Caster Sugar

Caster sugar

250 g

Rum

at least 40% alcohol

250 g
Orange

Orange

peel of an

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