Cooking baba. How to bake rum baba at home: recipe. Sugar glaze for baba

28.08.2023

My responsibility (from the age of five) in the family was to buy bread. Bread came naturally, but for change... For change, you bought either a bouchette, or a cod with raisins, or She... Soft. Porous. Fragrant. Soaked through with sugar syrup. Baba. While you slowly crawl home, you savor every bite, and then lick your fingers in an absolutely unsanitary manner.

So let's try to grow it ourselves. Let's take:

280 gr. flour

2 tbsp. Sahara

3-4 tbsp milk/water

100 gr. butter

1 tbsp yeast

Raisins, orange/lemon zest (optional)

Heat milk/water

We breed yeast in it and set it aside for now.

Eggs with sugar and a pinch of salt

mix thoroughly

add yeast

mix. Sift the flour into it

and knead the dough thoroughly

Add warm oil

We knead it with our hands (it somehow turns out more evenly. And for some reason it tastes better :)). At this stage you can add optionality :)

It smells delicious, but it's not a woman yet. This is a small thing :) We wrap it in plastic wrap, wrap it in a blanket (so as not to freeze) and put it in a warm, draft-free place for about an hour.

During this time, she will double in size and turn into a pretty chubby girl.

Which we carefully place in greased molds at about 1/2 height (or one large mold)

cover with a towel and let it come to its senses for about 40 minutes. The oven will just warm up to 200"C

We put it there for 20 minutes (until the tan turns golden brown)

While she's sunbathing there, let's prepare the syrup:

Pour a glass of sugar and a pinch of salt into a saucepan (C)

Fill with 2 glasses of water

Bring to a boil and reduce by 1/3

You can stop there, but “Ostap got carried away” and 5 tbsp went into the syrup. sea buckthorn jam

Instead of jam, you can add vanillin/vanilla sugar.

Remove from heat and pour in 50 g. dark rum/good flavored cognac

The women are ready

All that remains is to give them something to drink. Shake out the women's chin on a towel, prick each one from the bottom and sides with a fork. Pour syrup halfway into the molds where the women were baked.

and carefully lower the women there.

We put the whole thing in a warm place for about 40 minutes. I put it back in the oven, which has already been turned off, but has not yet had time to cool completely.

After 40 minutes, place the butt side up on plates, pour over the remaining syrup and let it sit for 15-20 minutes.

And that’s it, Drunk Woman, aka Baba, is ready :)

Bon appetit! May peace and a piece of something delicious be with you :)

PS: if someone doesn’t like the specific aroma of yeast, then you can squeeze a little lemon juice into the dough - it will remove this specificity :)

PS: Approved by impartial women's control

It seems that just recently a dessert under the sonorous name “Rum Baba” was extremely popular, but today this pastry is quickly forgotten. A rich cupcake, soaked in fragrant syrup and doused with sweet fondant, simply does not deserve such a sad fate.

Try to prepare a rum delicacy according to a traditional Soviet recipe, and you will certainly see that this dish should not be written off from culinary accounts.

Rum baba recipe

Ingredients for the dough:

Dry yeast (5 grams)
Filtered water (150 ml)
Sifted flour (210 grams)

For the test:

Butter (100 g)
Chicken eggs (3 pcs.)
Sifted flour (1 cup)
Vanilla sugar (10 g)
Raisins (quarter cup)
Granulated sugar (half a cup)
Salt (quarter teaspoon)

For impregnation:

Water (240 ml)
Granulated sugar (240 g)
Rum essence (to the chef's taste)

For fondant:

Lemon juice (1 tsp)
Granulated sugar (half a kilogram)
Water (160 ml)

How to make rum baba

1. Let's start with the dough. Combine wheat flour with yeast, then gradually add warm (never hot) water. The dough should be homogeneous, sticky and soft.

2. Cover the cup with the dough with a towel to prevent it from airing. She will have to spend the next three to four hours in comfortable warmth.

3. Having discovered that the dough has grown significantly in volume and has even begun to fall, we move on to the next stage: kneading.

4. Soften the cooled butter at room temperature. We wash the raisins several times, then pour a glass of boiling water - this will quickly soften them.

5. Break the eggs into a bowl and stir lightly. According to the standard, you need to add 1.5 eggs to the dough, that is, exactly half. They will be followed by salt and sugar, vanilla sugar, and flour. Stir everything until completely homogeneous.

6. Add soft butter - it should completely merge with the dough.

7. Roll out the dough onto the countertop and knead vigorously - eventually it will become fluffy and pliable.

8. Lightly dry the strained raisins on a napkin and place them in the baking base. Next, the dough must be returned to the bowl, covered with a towel and placed in the refrigerator for an hour.

9. After this period, knead again and cool for another couple of hours.

10. Treat the molds with vegetable oil. Place on a baking sheet and fill equally with dough (it should occupy approximately half the volume of the molds).

11. Cover the pieces with a towel and leave on the baking sheet for 1.5 hours. Later, when the dough has risen, brush the tops of the products with egg and preheat the oven at 210 degrees.

12. Finally, place the baking sheet in the hot oven. Rum baba bake for about 45 minutes, test readiness with a toothpick.

13. The finished baked goods are cooled slightly in the molds, and then finally cooled outside.

14. For impregnation, heat water with sugar in a saucepan. Bring to a boil and keep on the stove for another two minutes. After cooling, add aromatic rum essence.

15. Dip each cupcake into syrup from the bottom side. Hold for a few seconds; If desired, you can use a toothpick to make holes to allow more syrup to be absorbed. Finally, place the rum baba tops down.

16. Make the fudge: boil the water with sugar again, be sure to skim off the foam. The sweet grains should completely disappear; the mixture is boiled for a few more minutes.

17. Pour lemon juice. Stir thoroughly and continue cooking over low heat until the syrup is ready. Next, it needs to be cooled to 50-60 degrees - in room conditions this will take about fifteen minutes.

18. Beat the syrup with a mixer until white and thick. The fondant should not be runny or sticky!

19. Cover the bottoms of the cupcakes with the resulting glaze. The treat is ready!

You can experiment with fudge and impregnation for rum baba as you wish.

Vanilla impregnation. For vanilla impregnation, hot sugar syrup is combined with a quarter of a spicy vanilla pod, and after cooling, a small amount of vanilla liqueur is added.
Coffee impregnation. Coffee impregnation is also prepared on the basis of sugar syrup (60 grams of granulated sugar + 6 tablespoons of water). In this case, add a couple of tablespoons of strongly brewed espresso coffee to 1 glass.
Cognac impregnation. The combination of cognac and cherry syrup will not leave anyone indifferent! Mix a couple of tablespoons of alcohol with a glass of water and 60 milliliters of syrup. Heat on the stove, add 2 tablespoons of sugar and continue to cook for three minutes after boiling.
Honey impregnation. There is also a honey impregnation for baking: 150 grams of honey must be combined with two tablespoons of lemon juice, then the mixture is brought to a boil and simmered over low heat for about five minutes until thickened. Before soaking the cupcakes, the mixture is cooled to a warm state - by the way, this rule applies to all types of syrups. Alcohol (or the corresponding essence) is added to taste.
Chocolate impregnation. For chocolate impregnation, you need to make traditional sugar syrup (sugar + water in equal parts - one tablespoon each), and then add 4 beaten chicken yolks. After the next beating, the composition is replenished with liquid chocolate (melt a couple of bars in a water bath), as well as fresh whipped cream in the amount of 300 milliliters. The finished impregnation should cool.
Chocolate fudge. The fudge for the baba can also be chocolate. Combine 10 tablespoons of regular or cane sugar with 6 tablespoons of cocoa powder. Mash thoroughly, then stir in milk (3/4 cup) and melted butter (100 grams). After boiling, the heat should be reduced and the mixture should be stirred periodically. It is recommended to cool the thickened fudge to 40 degrees.
The easiest way to diversify the taste of rum babka is to use any fruit or citrus syrup (apple, apricot, lemon, orange).

Juicy, melting rum baba can be decorated with colored confectionery powder or grated citrus zest. Bon appetit!

There are absolutely no difficulties in preparing baba. The dough is extremely easy and quick to prepare in a food processor, in one and a half minutes. You can prepare lipstick in a food processor in a couple of minutes. The only thing is that to prepare lipstick and syrup for impregnation you need a thermometer for syrups or the ability to determine the readiness of the syrup “by touch” (I can’t do that, I check with a thermometer).

In this article I will show you step by step how I prepare rum baba and recipes for French rum baba, both our ancestors and their today’s second cousins.

Recipe for rum baba according to GOST for 1 kg of products

260 g of sourdough or low-acid sourdough (130 g of water, 130 g of white flour, 30 C, 2 hours of fermentation)
282 grams of white flour
1/4 tsp. salt (1.24 g)
10-21 g compressed yeast
103 g sugar
103 g unsalted butter
82 g eggs
52 grams of raisins in the dough
a couple of spoons of natural vanilla extract

Knead the dough until the gluten is well developed (1 minute 30 seconds in a food processor with a special dough blade), fold in the raisins by hand. The dough at the end of kneading should be very warm, approximately 35 C. Let the dough ferment in a very warm place (35-40 C), doing two kneadings: each time the dough increases in volume by 1.5-2 times, kneading it successively.

Cut the dough into pieces of such size that they fill the molds 1/3 or 1/4 and pull the pieces of dough into balls. Place them in greased or non-stick pans with the knot (tuck) facing up. Large babas can be baked in conical brioche, kugelhopf or savarin tins, with smooth or corrugated sides, preferably in tins with a tube in the centre. If the baba is baked in the form of a pie, then roll out the dough into a layer, place it in a greased baking sheet and prick it. Cover the molds or baking sheet with the dough with film.

Let it rise in a very warm place for 40-60 minutes (the pieces will increase in volume 2-3 times), brush with egg and bake at 180 degrees for 25 minutes, for small and medium-sized babas (from pieces of dough weighing 25-50 grams ) or bab-pies or longer for large babkas weighing up to 1 kg. Large babas weighing 0.5 - 1 kg will have to be covered with foil in the second half of baking to prevent them from getting burnt.

While the dough is fermenting, prepare the syrup for soaking and sugar fondant. After the babas have cooled in the molds, remove them and place them with the narrow end up. Let them dry thoroughly and ripen for a few hours. They will become dry and hard to the touch. Pour cognac, rum or cognac essence into the syrup, which has cooled to 20 C, and stir. Heat the lipstick to 55 C, until it flows, or store it warm, liquid. Prick the narrow end of each baba several times with a thin stick, piercing the crumb approximately to the middle of the cupcake. If the baba was baked in the form of a pie, then often prick the pie itself.

First, soak the babas in syrup by lowering the product into the syrup with the narrow end and lightly squeezing the babas so that it absorbs the syrup. The smaller the baba, the more syrup it is soaked in. Very large women are only lightly soaked in syrup, otherwise they will later sag under the weight of the very heavy syrup-drenched top. Place the soaked babas with the narrow end up so that the syrup can penetrate into the thickness of the crumb, under the weight of its own gravity. The pie in the pan is simply poured with syrup and allowed to penetrate into the crumb of the product before thickly pouring fondant over the top of the pie.

To glaze a baba with lipstick, take the wide end of the baba and lower the narrow end into a cup or saucepan with warm, pouring lipstick. You can glaze just the very top of the baba, or glaze the whole thing - both the top and the sides. Remove, swirl to spread the fondant evenly over the top or top and sides, and place the cake on a wire rack or baking sheet, narrow end up. The surface of the glazed rum baba is decorated with raisins, candied fruits and fresh or canned fruits, a mesh of colored lipstick, etc. After some time, the lipstick will cool and become dry to the touch and creamy like candy inside. Such a woman can already be served. She's ready.

Syrup for soaking rum baba

510 g sugar
560 g water
a few drops of rum essence
50 g cognac or rum

Sugar and water are boiled, stirring constantly, to 103.1-103.5 C (medium syrup, density 1.22-1.25), that is, until it boils down from a weight of 1070 g to a weight of 950 g. Cool the syrup to 20 C and add rum essence, cognac or rum.

Lipstick for glazing rum baba

We already sell sugar lipstick in finished form, in the form of dry powder. Just add water and knead into a lump of plastic white mass. But you can make lipstick at home yourself by boiling sugar and water into syrup and then stirring the cooled syrup into a white creamy mass.

Sugar is boiled with water with the addition of:

citric acid (instead of citric acid crystals, you can take lemon juice or vinegar)
invert syrup
glucose
starch syrup
corn syrup

Boil the syrup until it is tested on a soft ball (to a temperature of 114 -115 C). Any of these substances will not allow the syrup to then crystallize during cooling into a rough, matte-colored sugar mass; part of the syrup will remain syrup when cold, and the lipstick will be soft, creamy, with a shiny surface.

Pour the finished syrup into the bowl of the food processor and leave completely alone until the temperature of the syrup drops from 114-115 C to 60 C (about half an hour). Cover the food processor with a lid and turn on for 2-3 minutes. The clear syrup is mixed into a white creamy liquid - ultramicrocrystalline lipstick. The lipstick is ready. You can immediately glaze confectionery products with it - rum baba, cakes, buns, cookies and the like.

Pour the lipstick into a container, seal it tightly and store for up to a day at room temperature, then in the refrigerator for up to a month. If the lipstick turns out to be too thick for glazing even when heated, then after churning, dilute it with warm syrup for impregnation to the desired thickness (thickness of heavy cream or a little thicker).

If there is liquid glucose, then the syrup for lipstick is boiled like this

1 kg sugar
300 g water
250 g glucose

If you have invert syrup or starch syrup, then the recipe for lipstick syrup is like this

1 kg sugar
100 g invert syrup or starch syrup

If you have corn syrup on hand, boil the syrup in these proportions

1 kg sugar
170 g corn syrup
240 g water

If you have citric acid, lemon juice or plain white vinegar, then the recipe for lipstick syrup is like this

1 kg sugar
4 g citric acid or 1 g acetic acid
330 g water

Pour water over sugar and boil over high heat to 108 C. Pour in citric acid solution, lemon juice or vinegar. Continue cooking the syrup until you reach a temperature of 115-117 C (test for a weak ball).

Note: lemon juice contains 5% citric acid, so if you want to cook the syrup not with citric acid, but with lemon juice, instead of 4 g of citric acid powder, you will need to take 80 g of strained lemon juice per 1 kg of sugar in the syrup. In Europe, vinegars come in a wide range of acidity levels; regular white vinegar contains 5% acetic acid. So for syrup, instead of 4 g of citric acid, you will need to take 20 g of white vinegar

Place the kneaded dough on the table or in a bowl and fold in the raisins with your hands. If you are kneading the raisins on the table, do not dust the table or dough with flour. Knead as best you can and then use a scraper to collect the dough stuck to the table into a ball. The dough will not be soft or liquid, and this is why our rum baba differs from the French rum baba, whose brioche dough has such a weak creamy consistency that it is poured into molds using a pastry bag. Our rum baba dough is a very springy dough that sits on the counter in a tall ball.
During fermentation, there is no need to allow the dough to increase by more than 1.5-2 p in volume. My fermentation with two kneadings took 40 minutes!
The fermented dough is laid out in molds or on a baking sheet, filling them no more than 1/4-1/3. I took pieces of dough weighing 25 g for small babas (finished products weighing 50-60 g) and 55 g for medium-sized molds (finished babas weighing approximately 100 g). Remember that the dough is placed with the knot facing up, because... Ready-made women are turned upside down after baking and therefore the bottom of the dough in their forms should be smooth. You can take molds or baking sheets from silicone, steel or aluminum, even glass. Doesn't matter. Just don’t bake in black metal pans - they’ll burn terribly. Small forms are placed on a large baking sheet.
Proofing took me about 35-40 minutes. Before baking, brush the tops of the baked goods with egg.
I bake it all in 25 minutes. The first 15 minutes at 180 with convection, then I lower the oven temperature to 165 and finish baking so that they don’t get burned, but are baked through.
Let the products cool completely in the molds and then place them upside down on a baking sheet or wire rack.
Let it dry thoroughly for several hours. Large babas (0.5-1 kg) will be ready for soaking and glazing a day after baking. Small and medium - after 2-8 hours
The syrup for soaking women is the simplest and most unsophisticated: sugar and water in equal proportions, thoroughly boiled. If you cook it according to science, then it is boiled at a temperature of 103.1 C, maximum 103.5 C. It is flavored and mixed with rum or cognac only when cold, after the syrup has cooled to 20 C.
Before soaking in syrup at room temperature (20-40 C), the narrow end of each woman is pierced in several places with a stick. Pierce approximately to the middle of the product so that the syrup penetrates freely inside.
Place the soaked women end up. While they are waiting their turn to be glazed with fondant, the syrup will penetrate inside, soaking the crumb properly.
Then the woman’s narrow end is dipped into lipstick that has been heated and diluted with syrup (if necessary). They lower it only with the tip or “I don’t want it all the way.” Whoever likes it. When cooled, the surface of the lipstick will be dry and non-sticky, so don’t be afraid and glaze completely. The main thing is that your fingers are not bitten off while eating.)

Secrets of a rich French dessert - Rum baba + secrets of fondant

Fragrant, luxurious, soaked in syrup and covered with fudge, baba rum evokes an insatiable appetite just by its appearance. Just not a woman, but a woman. These are not just sweet buns, but an exquisite dessert that crowned the meals of kings and emperors. Rum baba covered with sugar syrup and rum is a magic of taste and aroma!Rum baba is topped with icing, whipped cream, chocolate or custard.

Our beloved and cozy rum women, as it turns out, are not even ours at all! And not women, but baba. And these are not just sweet buns, but an exquisite dessert that crowned the meals of kings and emperors. Oozing with sugar syrup, they are somewhat akin to oriental sweets, if not for... rum! It is he who creates harmony of taste, balances sweetness, turns even a very rich and aromatic, but still a bun, into a work of confectionery art.

The chocolate glaze covering the rum baba is not at all obligatory and far from the final form in which, according to the plans of French confectioners, the rum baba should appear: she is also entitled to a hat made of Chantilly or custard.

Rum baba recipe

Ingredients: 300 g flour, 15 g fresh yeast, 30 ml milk, 4 eggs, 5 g salt, 30 g sugar, 80 g butter, 1 tsp. orange water

Preparation: This dough must be kneaded with a mixer!

Melt the butter, mix with sugar and cool again until thickened. This is done to give the dough a more intense yellow color. Saffron is also used for this.

Dissolve yeast in warm milk, stir eggs with salt (also for color). Pour everything into the sifted flour and mix thoroughly. Knead for 5 minutes. at low speed. Add a spoonful of orange water and knead at medium speed until a homogeneous elastic dough is obtained, about 10 minutes more.

Continuing to stir, add butter and sugar little by little until the entire mixture is added. Knead for about 10 minutes more, until the dough is smooth and shiny and begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl. Place the dough in the same bowl, covered with film, in a warm place to rise for 1.5-2 hours - until the volume increases by 2-2.5 times.

Place the risen dough on a well-floured table, knead lightly, quickly form into a ball and place in a clean, dry bowl. Cover with film and place in the refrigerator to rise for 12-24 hours. Grease the molds (including silicone ones) with butter. Divide the dough into 10-12 pieces, form into balls, place them in the molds and press lightly so that the dough fills the molds well. There are special molds for rum baba with a diameter of 7.5 cm and a height of 1.5 cm, but if they are not available, you can use muffin molds.

Cover and place in a warm place to proof (let stand) for 45 minutes. For the syrup, bring water and sugar to a boil. glucose, skim off the foam, simmer over low heat for about 3 minutes, cool slightly. The syrup can be made simply from water and sugar, but then it must be boiled for a long time until it thickens. With glucose, syrup is prepared faster: literally in 5 minutes. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Bake the baba for 20 minutes. After removing from the oven, immediately remove from the pans and place on a wire rack, bottom up. Ready!

Baba recipe - 2

Let's prepare the dough. Dissolve 1 teaspoon of sugar and salt in warm milk, add yeast and stir well until the yeast is completely dissolved. Gradually add ~ 1.5-2 cups of flour and stir well. The dough should have the consistency of pancakes. Place the resulting dough in a warm place without drafts for 40-60 minutes, until the dough rises and increases in volume by 2-2.5 times. The dough will be ready when it has increased in volume several times and then begins to fall off.

Grind the yolks with the remaining sugar until white. Add the yolks, mashed with sugar, into the suitable dough and mix the dough well. Then add melted butter, vegetable oil and margarine. Add 1 tablespoon of cognac to the dough. Mix the dough well again until smooth. Lastly, add the whipped whites and gently mix the dough. Add washed raisins. Gradually add the sifted flour and knead the soft dough.

Knead the dough well and let it rise (about 2 hours). Now divide the dough into balls the size of a walnut and place them in molds greased with sunflower oil. Let's stand for 30 minutes. Bake for 25-30 minutes at 180 degrees. Let cool for 2 hours in the molds. We leave the preparations for the “women” overnight. If this is not done, the crumb will fall apart when soaked.

Prepare the syrup: boil 1 glass of sugar and 1.5 glasses of water after boiling for 10-15 minutes. We make several punctures in each woman’s figure part and place them in warm syrup for 15 seconds. Remove and place tops up. Now the fudge, without which rum women are not rum women!

Sugar - 250 g, water - 150 ml, citric acid solution - 12 drops, 3 tbsp. l. Roma

Pour sugar into a saucepan, add hot water and stir until the sugar dissolves. Add rum. Using a brush or gauze soaked in water, wash off the sticky sugar from the edges of the pan, put it on high heat and cook without stirring. As soon as the syrup begins to boil, remove the foam. Again, wash off the splashes of sugar syrup from the edges of the pan, cover the pan with a lid and cook the syrup until it tastes like a soft ball.

Cool to 40 degrees and start beating (dough attachment). The mass begins to gradually turn white and turn into a fine-crystalline mass. We stop, take a wooden spatula and begin to knead the mass. Put the saucepan on the fire and bring it to a fudge state (like thick sour cream). Dip the tops of the baba into the fudge and let dry. If the fudge still remains hard (thick) when heated, then feel free to add a little water.

Ingredients for "Rum Baba":

Egg - 4 pcs

Margarine (for baking) - 175 g

Vegetable oil – 70 ml

Sugar - 0.75 cups.

Wheat flour (sifted) - about 1 kg

Salt (pinch)

Rum (white) - 4 tbsp. l.

Milk - less than 2 cups.

Yeast (pressed) - 50 g

Secrets of fondant

how to make fudge for glazing
Boil sugar and water into syrup and then stir the cooled syrup into a white creamy mass.
Sugar is boiled with water and either
- citric acid (instead of citric acid crystals, you can take lemon juice or vinegar)
- invert syrup
- glucose
- starch syrup (Russia)
- corn syrup (USA, Canada)
Boil the syrup until it tastes like a soft ball (to a temperature of 114-115C). Any of these substances will not allow the syrup to then crystallize during cooling into a rough, matte-colored sugar mass; part of the syrup will remain syrup when cold, and the lipstick will be soft, creamy, with a shiny surface.
Pour the finished syrup into the bowl of the combine and leave completely alone until the temperature of the syrup from 114-115C drops to 60C (about half an hour). Cover the food processor with a lid and turn on for 2-3 minutes. The transparent syrup is mixed into a white creamy liquid - ultramicrocrystalline lipstick. The lipstick is ready. You can immediately glaze confectionery products with it - rum baba, cakes, buns, cookies, etc.
Pour the lipstick into a container, seal it tightly and store for up to a day at room temperature, then in the refrigerator for up to a month. If the lipstick turns out to be too thick for glazing even when heated, then after churning, dilute it with warm syrup to soak it to the desired thickness (thickness of heavy cream or a little thicker).
if there is glucose, then the syrup for lipstick is boiled like this
1 kg sugar
300g water
250g glucose

if you have invert syrup or starch syrup (also available at McCall's store), then the recipe for syrup for lipstick is like this
1 kg sugar
100g invert syrup or starch syrup
water

if you have corn syrup on hand, then boil the syrup in these proportions
1 kg sugar
170g corn syrup
240g water

if you have citric acid, lemon juice or simple white vinegar, then the recipe for lipstick syrup is this
1 kg sugar
4g citric acid or 1g acetic acid
330g water

Pour water over sugar and boil over high heat to 108C. Pour in a solution of citric acid, lemon juice or vinegar. Continue cooking the syrup until it reaches T 115-117C (test for a weak ball).
Note: lemon juice contains 5% citric acid, so if you want to cook the syrup not with citric acid, but with lemon juice, instead of 4 g of citric acid powder, you will need to take 80 g of strained lemon juice per 1 kg of sugar in the syrup. In America, vinegars come in a wide range of acidity levels; regular white vinegar contains 5% acetic acid. So for syrup, instead of 4 g of citric acid, you will need to take 20 g of white vinegar.

The main thing with rum baba is to prepare the lipstick and syrup for impregnation in advance. And the women themselves bake in an elementary way, there are no difficulties at all and it’s simply impossible to screw up the dough.

Rum baba is a product of “Polish” origin. But not in the sense that this product is an old folk Polish pastry, although rum baba are popular in modern Poland. And in the sense that it was “created” by a native of Lvov, a Pole, Stanislav Leshchinsky, during his emigration to Lorraine at the end of the 17th century.

The traditional Alsatian yeast cake kuglof (kugelhopf) seemed to him to be a bit dry in taste, so King Stanislaus doused it with rum and ate it that way. The king's favorite book at that time was the Arabian fairy tales "A Thousand and One Nights", so he named his creation in honor of the hero of the fairy tales - Ali Baba. Alsatian yeast cakes kugelhopfs, the ancestors of rum baba.
This product quickly became popular at the French court, where it was served with a sauce made from sweet Malaga wine. Leszczynski himself preferred the Polish version of baba: the cake was baked from rye flour (like gingerbread) and soaked in Hungarian dessert wine.

French chefs improved the baba recipe by baking cupcakes from brioche dough, thoroughly soaking the products with highly alcoholic syrups. Parisian rum baba was first sold at Storer's restaurant on Rue Montorgueil in the mid-eighteenth century. They are still baked there today!

These products inspired Parisian pastry chefs to create such famous French pastries as the ring-shaped savarin cake and the octagonal or hexagonal gorenflot cake.

Modern European confectioners do not distinguish between dough for savarin, baba or gorenflot and use these words as synonyms, although, strictly speaking, in reality they adhere to the tradition of baking baba from completely unfermented yeast dough, and savarens from sponged or unleavened yeast dough of a similar recipe. In addition, raisins are no longer added to the dough for modern French rum babas and savarens and, unlike Soviet rum babas, they are soaked twice: first in syrup and then in pure rum.

In France, rum baba are not buns or cupcakes, but a dessert, served on a plate or in a cup and eaten with a spoon: they are so heavily soaked in syrup and at the same time decorated with whipped cream and fruit.

Classic French recipe for raisin rum baba

For sixteen rum baba, baked in small glasses - darioles with a diameter of 7 cm and a depth of 7 cm.

Raisins in the dough:

100 g raisins
300 g rum

Soak the raisins in rum in advance to swell them thoroughly before stirring the raisins into the dough.
The remaining rum after soaking the raisins is then used to soak the finished babas.

250 g bread flour, dry weight
25 grams of fresh yeast (or 2 tsp dry, soaked for 15 minutes in 2 tbsp very warm water)
a good pinch of salt
2 tbsp. Sahara
4 eggs (200 gr)
100 g soft butter

Knead the dough until elastic before folding in the raisins.
Immediately make the kneaded dough into 16 portions and place in molds greased with melted butter.
Allow the dough to fully proof in a warm place and bake at 200 C for 15-20 minutes.
Immediately after baking, remove the baba from the pan and let cool on a wire rack.

Syrup for soaking rum baba:

1 liter of water
500 g sugar

Bring water and sugar to a boil. Dip each cake into the hot syrup and keep it completely submerged in the syrup using a slotted spoon until no more air bubbles are released from the cake.
Remove and place the soaked babas on a wire rack placed inside a deep baking tray, allowing excess syrup to drain.
Soak the cold babas in the remaining rum, adding more rum if necessary to ensure the babas are properly soaked. Collect the rum dripping from the bab and wash the cupcakes with it again.
Serve rum baba with whipped cream and fresh berries, most often fresh raspberries or strawberries, and garnish with rum-soaked raisins.
Fill the plate on which you place the rum baba with cognac sauce (liquid custard).

Cognac sauce for rum baba:

250 g sugar
200 g eggs (4 large)
300 g milk
150 g water
50 grams of condensed milk (condensed milk with sugar)
100 g cognac

Grind the eggs with sugar, add milk, condensed milk and boiled water.
Heat the mixture to 85-90C and maintain it at this temperature for 10 minutes.
Then cool the sauce and add cognac.

Modern recipe for French rum baba from sponge dough for 1 kg of flour

300 g baking flour
50 g pressed yeast
150-200 g milk (26 C)

Knead and let ferment at room temperature until tripled in volume.

700 g baking flour
20 g salt
120 grams of linden honey (or any light honey with a mild aroma and taste)
400 g butter
1500 g eggs
grated zest of one lemon

Knead the dough with half the eggs, then add the remaining eggs to the dough one at a time, continuing to knead until you have a creamy, silky dough.
To prevent the rum baba from falling apart when soaked in syrup, neither water nor milk is added to the dough.
Let the dough rest for 15 minutes and place in a pastry bag with a smooth tube.
Pour portions of the dough into rum baba molds, let the dough proof at 24-26 C and bake at 200 C.
Remove the finished muffins from the molds and store in the refrigerator.
Dip cold cupcakes in hot syrup with rum, soak through and place on a wire rack.
Pour rum over it, coat it with hot apricot marmalade or jam, top with lipstick and place in an oven heated to 270 C for 1 minute.

From unfermented dough:

1 kg cold bread flour (0-4 C)
20 g salt
80 g pressed yeast
120 g linden honey
550 g soft butter
1650 g very cold eggs (0-4C)
grated zest of one lemon

Knead the dough with half the eggs and 150 grams of butter until it stops sticking to the walls of the bowl.
Slowly whisk in the remaining eggs, whisking in each one before adding the next.
Lastly, stir in the remaining butter.
Place in teflon-coated molds or silicone molds.
Let rise at 24-26 C and bake small muffins for 12 minutes, and regular-sized muffins for 15-16 minutes at 210-220 C.
Remove the finished muffins from the molds and place in the refrigerator.

The secret to success is cold dough during kneading and proofing and cold cakes when soaking them in syrup and cognac. Therefore, the flour for the dough is placed either in the refrigerator or in the freezer and the eggs must also be from the refrigerator, T 0-4C.

Cold baked muffins can be stored in the refrigerator for up to 30 days and soaked in the required amounts in syrup as needed (this is done in restaurants that have this dessert on the menu, and in bakeries selling these products).

In some cases, rum baba cakes are dried completely in a warm oven and stored dry, but they taste just as good as regular rum baba cakes made from cold, stale cakes.

Rum women according to GOST USSR

Cupcakes in the shape of a truncated cone with a ribbed or smooth side surface. The product is generously soaked in syrup and glazed with lipstick. The crumb is yellow, porous, with raisins evenly distributed.

Makes 10 cupcakes weighing 74 grams

50 g syrup for impregnation
210 g sugar fondant

412 grams of white flour
1.24 g salt (1/4 tsp)
21 grams of compressed yeast
103 g sugar
103 g butter
82 g eggs
39-76 grams of water
52 grams of raisins in the dough

Bake the products from sponge dough (dough for 2.5-3 hours at 35-40 C until it begins to settle, dough for 2-2.5 hours, knead one or two).
Place the dough into greased molds in portions weighing 81-85 g, seam side up. Set to proof for 40-60 minutes and bake at 210-220 C for 45-50 minutes.
Let the baked cupcakes stand in the molds for 4 hours, then remove the products from the mold and turn them wide side down.
Let the cupcakes mature for 8-24 hours, then soak in the syrup.
Pierce the narrow end of the baba several times with a wooden pin to the middle and lower the narrow end of the product into cold (not higher than 45 C) rum or cognac syrup for 10-12 seconds, lightly pressing the baba in the syrup.
After soaking the baba, place the narrow part up on a baking sheet so that the syrup slowly penetrates into all the pores of the product.
Next, glaze with sugar lipstick warmed to 50 C on the narrow side, dipping the woman with the narrow end into the lipstick.
The lipstick should lie in a thin layer without cracks.
Decorate the surface of the rum baba with raisins, candied fruits and fresh and canned fruits.

You can also bake by rolling out the dough into a layer (in the form of a pie), which, after baking on a baking sheet, is turned upside down onto another baking sheet, left for 6 hours, pierced in many places, soaked in syrup and filled with warm fondant. The finished pie is cut into pieces.

Syrup for soaking rum baba according to GOST USSR

for 100 grams of syrup:

51 g sugar
56 g water
0.2g rum essence
5 grams of cognac or rum

Boil sugar and water, stirring constantly, until 103.1-103.5 C (medium density syrup), i.e. until it boils down from a weight of 107 grams to a weight of 95 grams.
Cool the syrup to 20 C and add rum essence and cognac.

Many other cakes, sponge and yeast, baked in babka pans are also called baba or babka. They have nothing to do with rum women.

Bon appetit!