- Janny de Moor - https://www.jannydemoor.nl/en -

Rum Baba

Ingrediënten

Baking tools:

12 dariole or ring moulds

(contents 100 ml)

or large turban/savarin mould, contents 1½  l,

all heavily greased with butter

 

Batter:

Syrup + apricot topping:

Some images are stamped indelibly on you memory. We made a cycling trip to Paris, climbed a heavy ascending slope and then there was this baker’s shop in that small village. Baba au Rhum was his special offer. Never seen nor tasted. Before our eyes the cakes were drenched with rum syrup and topped with apricot jam.

At the cradle of this pastry stood, according to reports, the Polish king Stanislaus Lezczyński. After a reign of not more than five years he was dispelled and went to France with the whole of his court. Luck would have it that Louis XV (15) married Marie (22), daughter of Stanislaus. Of course father in law visited the young couple regularly in Paris, where he achieved fame as a gastronome. There he would have sprinkled a dry yeast cake from Lvov (Lemberg, his birthplace, now Ukraine) with rum, very popular just after the French had settled  in Jamaica. Baba means ‘mummy’ and indicates a cylinder-shaped small yeast cake that reminds of the well known Russian dolls.