The rum baba is a wonderful thing. It is soft, spongy, and drenched in rum syrup. The very first rum baba I ever tasted was on the lunch menu in the restaurant I started my career in, Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud, and the softness and balance of flavours was something to behold.
Served simply with vanilla cream (or crème Chantilly), it was a triumph, and it was hugely popular with the chefs and guests alike for years. We tested recipe after recipe to get the texture just right, and when it was perfect, it really was perfect.
This week’s recipe is a homage to that time; and to a memory that has stuck with me ever since. This is my take on that classic, a dark and stormy rum baba, blending a light and fluffy yeasted dough with a rum cocktail, the dark and stormy.
Adding flavours of popular cocktails seems to work well in desserts, as many cocktails use fruit as their base. A Dark and Stormy is a combination of dark rum, ginger beer and lime. I’m using these flavours to create a delicious syrup to soak the babas in. The texture of a baba is just that – soaked. Bathing the baked sponges allows them to absorb all those tropical, bright flavours.
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I make a simple syrup with brown sugar, water, lime zest and juice, vanilla, and a little syrup from a jar of stem ginger. I chop up a few little balls of stem ginger too and throw them in, with some dark spiced rum. This gives just the right amount of warmth and bite. The syrup can be made in advance and reheated gently before soaking the babas.
The baba dough is quite straightforward too. While it uses yeast, it is much softer and stickier than a bread dough. Once mixed and kneaded together, I tend to pipe it into moulds, snipping off the dough with a scissors as I go. I use cylindrical silicone moulds for these (5cm in height and diameter), but you could use dariole moulds or ramekins. I place my moulds on a weighing scales and pipe about 35g of dough into each one. This ensures each baba is of equal size and will rise uniformly.
I reserve some of the syrup for serving on the side and slice some fresh pineapple very thinly, adding it into this reserved syrup to serve.
These babas are a joy to eat, tropical, zesty and delicious. Just add some vanilla cream or ice-cream and enjoy.
Recipe: Dark and Stormy rum babas
