Rum Baba with Mascarpone, Raspberries and Rum Syrup
A rum baba is a small yeast cake saturated in syrup made with hard liquor, usually rum, and sometimes filled with whipped cream. I have literally tipped it on its side and added mascarpone and raspberries for richness and freshness to cut through the sweet, buttery rum breads.
serves 6
INGREDIENTS
Baba Dough
7g instant dry yeast
220g bread flour
½ tsp salt
50g sugar
70ml milk
2 eggs
100g butter, softened
Rum Syrup
500ml water
150g sugar
1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped
Orange peel from 1 orange
100ml rum
20g melted butter for greasing moulds
50g sugar for greasing moulds
200g mascarpone
200g fresh raspberries
METHOD
Prepare baba dough. Place yeast, flour, salt and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a beater attachment. Ensure that yeast is separate from salt. Set aside. Warm milk in the microwave to around 37°C. Add eggs and warm milk to flour mixture and mix on low to medium speed for 8 minutes. Add butter a little at a time, and mix until just incorporated. Cover mixing bowl with plastic wrap and let dough rest for 1 hour.
Grease six dariole moulds with melted butter and sugar. Place on a baking tray.
Deflate baba dough with a spoon and place into a piping bag. Pipe 60g baba dough into each prepared dariole mould. Cover with plastic wrap and let dough proof for another 15–20 minutes or until risen to almost the top of the mould.
Preheat oven to 170°C.
Place dariole moulds on a baking tray and place on the middle shelf of the preheated oven. Bake for 16–18 minutes or until golden. Remove from oven and leave cakes to cool in moulds for 10 minutes before running a small knife around the edge of moulds and turning cakes out onto a wire rack.
Prepare rum syrup. Place water, sugar, vanilla pod and seeds and orange peel in a small saucepan over high heat. Bring to a boil, then add rum and remove from heat.
Pierce warm baba using a skewer. Place a large tray under the wire rack and ladle hot syrup slowly over baba, ensuring that syrup goes into holes in baba.
To plate the dessert, place a baba on a serving plate and drizzle with a little rum syrup. Add a quenelle of mascarpone and top with raspberries.
Recipe extracted from Kiwi Baker at Home by Dean Brettschneider, published by Potton & Burton
