Baba

History

The babà's most-repeated origin story credits an exiled Polish king living in Lorraine, who is said to have found the dry Alsatian kugelhopf wanting and had it moistened with sweet wine; his pastry chef is traditionally said to have refined the idea, switched to rum, and carried the sweet to Paris. A competing tale has the king naming the cake for Ali Baba. The name itself is usually traced to the Polish *baba*, "old woman."

Naples embraced the cake only later and gave it the deep rum soak now associated with the *babà napoletano*.

Artusi's version stands before that transformation, and the difference is in the ingredient list rather than in any argument. A spoonful of Marsala and a spoonful of rum or cognac go into the dough itself, along with sultanas, malaga raisins, candied peel, butter, eggs and cream; there is no soaking syrup at all. He opens by warning that this is a sweet which wants to look you in the face — that is, one that needs patience and attention to come out well — and the recipe bears him out, with a first leavening for the yeast sponge and a second that takes four or five hours.

The story of how the cake reached Lorraine, Paris and eventually Naples, and the dates attached to it, we learned from popular reference and food-writing sources, and we were unable to locate the evidence they rest on.

Ingredients

• 250 g Hungarian or superfine flour
• 70 g butter
• 50 g powdered sugar
• 50 g sultana raisins
• 30 g Malaga raisins
• 30 g brewer's yeast
• 1 dl milk or, better, cream
• 2 eggs
• 1 tbsp Marsala
• 1 tbsp rum or cognac
• 10 g candied peel
• 1 pinch salt
• vanilla

Instructions

1. Knead the yeast with a quarter of the flour and warm milk into a firm dough, cut a cross, and let it rise near gentle heat about half an hour.
2. Work the eggs with the sugar, add the remaining flour, risen dough, melted butter, Marsala and rum; work to a batter that leaves the bowl, then add raisins and candied peel and let rise.
3. Stir, pour into a buttered fluted mold (double the volume), cover, and let rise 2+ hours until doubled to the rim.
4. Bake, test with a straw until dry, and dry a little longer in the oven; unmold, dust with icing sugar, and serve cold.