We owe this pastry monument to a great chef, Nicolas Stohrer, who invented the recipe at the beginning of the 18th century to relieve the damaged teeth of an old man.
Back on the creation and evolution of the baba through the ages.
The rum baba is French, and very French!
He was born more exactly in Lorraine, in the 18th century.
And it was to relieve the damaged teeth of an old man that it was imagined ... Here is his real story.
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This pastry monument was born in Lunéville, near Nancy, at the beginning of the 18th century.
We owe it to the brilliant pastry chef Nicolas Stohrer, who took care of the former deposed king of Poland Stanislas Leszczynski.
In his castle, the latter liked to eat either kouglofs or Polish cakes which reminded him of his origins.
But these were a bit hard and his teeth were no longer in great condition.
It was then that his chef had the good idea to soak his cakes to soften them.
And it started not with rum - there was none in Nancy at that time - but with Madeira or Tokay wine, which made the cake much softer.
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No, the authentic baba does not contain cream!
Nicolas Stohrer then left for Paris to accompany Marie Leszczynska, the wife of King Louis XV.
He then moved to rue Montorgueil where he opened a pastry shop in 1730 - which still exists and which is the oldest pastry shop in Paris.
You can still eat rum babas there.
Rum, in all of this, came in much later.
He is a descendant of Nicolas Stohrer who, in the 1800s, decided to replace the famous Madeira wine with rum.
Let's finish by dismantling a received idea: no, in the authentic baba, there is no cream!
It has been added to contemporary pastry.
Recipe
Ingredients
120 g flour
3 eggs
50g butter
300g of sugar
A packet of yeast
A tiny bit of milk
A little water
Rum
Recipe
1.
Mix 150g of sugar with the egg yolks.
2.
Whip your egg whites.
3.
Add the flour and melted butter.
Mix everything.
4.
Put the resulting apparatus in small molds, or in a large, well buttered.
5.
Bake at 180 degrees for 15 minutes, then lower the oven to 150 degrees and leave for another 15 minutes.
6.
During this time, make a syrup.
Take the remaining 150g of sugar and mix with a little water and a good dash of rum.
Once the sugar is melted by the water, you have obtained the syrup.
7.
Soak your babas well as needed, so that they are very soft.