Baba au Rhum #TheCakeSliceBakers

 My husband has been asking me to make a "yeasted cake" ever since I started making him watch the Great British Bake Off with me.

Seriously, he's been asking for years. LITERALLY years.

So for my last 2023 Cake Slice Bakers choice... Merry Christmas, Stanley!

For the last bake of the year, it's a Cake Slice Baker tradition to have a dealer's choice of cake selections. Check out the links at the bottom of this post to see what the other lovely bakers chose!

Well, we've baked our way through Gateau: The Surprising Simplicity of French Cakes-- and it's been fun!

So what's up with the Rum Baba?

Before baking powder became commercially available in 1843, bakers used yeast to make their cakes rise. 

Weird, huh? Leavened cakes eaten by Pharaohs, Romans, and Jane Austen *might* have been similar to this Rum Baba. 

*Did Egyptians and Romans have rum? No, that actually came as a byproduct of molasses production in the Caribbean. But they DID have yeast. And baked cakes. And probably made syrups to pour over sweets. But Mr. Darcy totally (probably) would have eaten a rum baba.

 Aaaaanyway...

Making the batter was a different experience than I'd ever had in my years of cake-ing. The recipe started out like making bread, but the batter was stretchy and thicker than a modern cake...and more floppy and pourable than any bread dough I've worked with.

It was (of course) yeasty smelling, and (with only 1/4 cup sugar) only very lightly sweetened.

After it's second rise in a bundt pan, it only took 25ish minutes to bake (just about long enough to make the soaking syrup).

It was about this time that I remembered that I (again) was out of rum. I used the last of it in my November Rum Cake... and didn't even have rum extract. 

So for the syrup, I Frankensteined some of the other syrup suggestions that Aleksandra Crapanzano recommended. I added orange, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, and some drops of Lorann candy extract labelled "Sparkling Wine." 

Amazingly, it was pretty tasty. 

I'll need to try it with rum to get the authentic Baba experience.

The result was very interesting. The texture of my Rum(less) Baba was bouncy and moist. Yeasty, sweet, and spongy. A cake with less structure would have definitely turned to mush with that much syrup. But the bread-like composition held up like a champ. We liked it!

So if someone in your family has been asking you for years to make them a yeasted cake (or if you'd just like an interesting twist on a classic, Christmas Rum Cake), give this Baba au Rhum a try.

Merry Christmas, and blessings for the New Year!

Baba au Rhum

from "Gateau: The Surprising Simplicity of French Cakes" by Aleksandra Crapanzano

Baba:

4 1/2 teaspoons dry yeast

1 cup whole milk

1/4 cup granulated sugar

4 large eggs, room temp

2 teaspoons vanilla

3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup butter

1. Pour the yeast into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook.

2. Heat the milk to 115F and pour it over the yeast. Add the sugar and stir-- leaving the mixture to rest for 10 minutes.

3. Turn the mixer to low and add the eggs one at a time. Add the vanilla, flour, salt, and finally the butter. Beat at medium high for 6 minutes to create a very elastic dough. 

4. Form the dough into a soft ball, cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and let rise for 90 minutes (or until doubled.

5. Generously butter a 10-12 cup bundt pan. Transfer the dough into the tin, and allow to rise until it reaches the top (around 1 hour).

6. Heat the oven to 375F. Bake the cake for 30 minutes, or until a knife comes out cleanly. Allow to cool 10 minutes before pouring the syrup.

Rum Syrup:

2 cups sugar

2.5 cups water

1 1/2 cups dark rum

zest of one orange

While the baba is baking, simmer the sugar and water together in a medium saucepan until the sugar is dissolved. Discard the zest.

Pour 1/4 of the syrup onto the cake. Allow to sit 5 minutes, then turn the cake out onto a wire rack placed over a cookie sheet to collect excess syrup. Slowly pour the syrup over the cake in stages (it'll drink up every bit).

Glaze:

1 cup apricot jam

2 T rum

Mix the jam and rum in a microwave-safe bowl. Heat until the jam is liquified. Press through a sieve to remove the solids, and brush over the room-temperature cake.

Enjoy ;)

Each month The Cake Slice Bakers are offered a selection of cakes from the current book we are baking through. This year it is Gâteau: The Surprising Simplicity of French Cakes by Aleksandra Crapanzano. We each choose one cake to bake, and then on the 20th - never before - we all post about our cake on our blogs. There are a few rules that we follow, but the most important ones are to have fun and enjoy baking & eating cakes!

Follow our Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest pages where you can find all of our cakes, as well as inspiration for many other cakes. You can also click on the links below to take you to each of our cakes. If you have a blog and are interested in joining The Cake Slice Bakers and baking along with us, please send an email to thecakeslicebakers at gmail dot com for more details.

The Cake Slice Bakers also have a new Facebook group called The Cake Slice Bakers and Friends. This group is perfect for those who do not have a blog but want to join in the fun and bake through this book.

This is our last cake from Gâteau: The Surprising Simplicity of French Cakes, which we have enjoyed baking through. Stay tuned as we will be announcing the next cake-centric book we will be baking through in 2023 soon!

Traditionally our last bake for the year is free choice, and our choices for December 2023 were ~

Raspberry Clafoutis

• All That's Left Are The Crumbs

Berry Cake

• Karen's Kitchen Stories

Walnut Espresso Cake

• My Recipe Reviews

Chocolate Orange Marble Cake

• A Little Bit of All Right

Kings of the Epiphany Galette

• A Day in the Life on the Farm

Baba au Rhum

• Amandie Bakes