These lovely yeasted cakes are soaked in a rum syrup. Can't really go wrong with that, right? Well this first test shows you definitely can. The words "wet gingerbread" were used…
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Yield: 12 babas
Equipment
- 3 Tbsp cookie scoop
- Mini bunt pan with 12 wells
- Large mixing bowl
- Rubber spatula
- Sauce pan
Ingredients
For the Babas
- 220 g bread flour
- 7 g active dry yeast
- ½ tsp salt
- 50 g granulated sugar
- ¼ cup whole milk
- 100 g butter, softened
Rum Syrup
- 1 cup dark rum
- 1½ cups dark brown sugar
- 1 peel of an orange, dried
- 4 whole cloves
- 4 corns of all spice
- 2 whole anise seed pods
- 1 small cinnamon stick
Instructions
For the Babas
- The flour and sugar were combined in a bowl along with the salt and yeast, added on opposite sides of the bowl to avoid too much direct contact. I am not sure if this is really significant but some people say that salt can retard the yeast’s activity and so avoiding direct contact is good. I have never seen this to be a problem with dry yeast personally. The ingredients were then mixed together.
- In a separate bowl, the milk and eggs were whisked until homogeneous.
- The egg mixture was added to the flour mixture and mixed with a rubber spatula. This dough will be very sticky and that’s expected. Mix as well as possible until the dough becomes elastic. There are proper ways to knead such a dough but I’m still figuring it out myself.
- Add the butter to the dough and knead it until smooth and shiny. This dough will now be quite wet but also very rich and smooth.
- The dough was allowed to rise. First batch I allowed an hour and a half. Second batch got 2 hours.
- The oven was heated to 350°F.
- Once risen, the dough was mixed again to release the air and divided into the mini bunt cake molds. My mold holds 12 individual bunts. These are quite small. Each can hold about 3 Tablespoons of batter.
- Once divided, the dough was allow to rise again until molds were filled nearly to the top.
- hey were bake for 20-22 minutes or until golden
For the Rum Syrup
- All of the ingredients were added to a small pot and simmer until all of the alcohol flavor was released. Roughly 20-30 minutes.
- The syrup was then cooled completely with the spices intact.
Assembly
- When everything is cooled and ready to be assembled, the syrup was strained and the cakes soaked in the cooled syrup until completely saturated. I let my cakes then strain on a cooling rack for an hour before packaging them away.
- You can top these cakes as you please. Options include whipped cream and fruit or just fruit compote. There are nearly endless possibilities here but I opted for simle whipped cream and some canned and fresh peaches with a sprig of mint.
Results
I believe this was described by my boyfriend as “wet gingerbread”. Not quite what I was going for but not all tests work out. Will have to try again.
