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BABA (BAH-buh)
A
small leavened cake usually made with raisins and soaked in rum.
Common
clues: Cake with a kick; Alcohol-laced dessert; Rum-flavored
cake; ____ au rhum; Raisin rum cake
Crossword
puzzle frequency:
2 times a year
Frequency
in English language:
30338 / 86800
Video:
Chestnut and
baba au rhum
[Courtesy
of the French
Pastry Chef]
According
to legend, baba was brought to Paris in the 1600s by King
Stanislas Leszczynska, who had been deposed from Poland.
Apparently he found the customary kouglhopf too dry for his
liking and dipped the bread in rum. He was so thrilled with this
combination that he decided to name it after Ali Baba, one of the
heroes in his favorite book, A
Thousand and One Nights.
His chef later refined the sweet bread by using brioche dough and
adding raisins to the recipe. The dish at this time was simply
called “baba”.
A
century later, French chef Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin created
a cake that he served with a rum sauce that he called Baba Au
Savarin. This dessert became very popular in France, but soon
people began dropping the name Savarin and simply called it Baba
Au Rhum.
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