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A rum baba or baba au rhum is a small yeast cake saturated in syrup made with hard liquor, usually rum, and sometimes filled with whipped cream or Custard. It is most typically made in individual servings (about a 5 cm tall, slightly tapered cylinder) but sometimes can be made in larger forms similar to those used for . The batter for baba includes eggs, milk and butter.
The modern baba au rhum (rum baba), with dried fruit and soaked in rum, was invented in the italics=no in Paris, France, in 1835 or before. Today, the word baba in France and almost everywhere else outside Central and Eastern Europe usually refers specifically to the rum baba.
The original baba was introduced into France in the 18th century via Lorraine. This is attributed to Stanislaus I, the exiled king of Poland.Courchamps, Dictionnaire Général de la Cuisine Française, 1839Grimod de La Reynière, "Almanach des gourmands", 1806 The Larousse Gastronomique has reported that Stanislaus had the idea of soaking a dried Gugelhupf (a cake roughly similar to the baba and common in Alsace-Lorraine when he arrived there) or a baba with Liquor. Another versionHistory of the baba according to the Pâtisserie Stohrer (possibly biased). [1] . is that when Stanislaus brought back a baba from one of his voyages it had dried up. Nicolas Stohrer, one of his Pastry chef (or possibly just apprentice pâtissiers at the time), solved the problem by adding Malaga wine, saffron, dried and fresh raisin and Custard. The writer Courchamps stated in 1839 that the descendants of Stanislaus served the baba with a Sauce boat containing sweet Malaga wine mixed with one sixth of Tanaisie liqueur.
Stohrer followed Stanislaus's daughter Marie Leszczyńska to Versailles as her pâtissier in 1725 when she married King Louis XV, and founded his pâtisserie in Paris in 1730. One of his descendants allegedly had the idea of using rum in 1835. While he is believed to have done so on the fresh cakes (right out of the mold), it is a common practice today to let the baba dry a little so that it soaks up the rum better. Later, the recipe was refined by mixing the rum with aroma compound sugar syrup.
The baba is also popular in Naples, and became a popular Neapolitan specialty under the name babà or babbà.
The pastry has appeared on restaurant menus in the United States at least since 1899. "Haan's Ladies' and Gentlemen's Restaurant," New York, menu dated 9 December 1899: "Dessert ... Baba au Rhum 15."
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