Babà Napoletano: how to make the tastiest rum bombs from Italy

Traditional Italian recipes with a modern twist: the new cookbook Big Mamma’s Cucina Popolare is packed with them. The Italian chefs at Big Mamma cook according to their mothers’ traditions, but with a contemporary signature. Like this Neapolitan babà with rum, for example: the sweet little cake submerged in a boozy syrup. Ridiculously delicious!

How to make babà with rum

• Start with the dough. In a large bowl, use an electric mixer to combine the flour with the yeast, salt, honey, butter and two eggs. Knead the dough briefly by hand until you have a smooth dough (it should not stick to the sides of the bowl). Add the remaining egg and mix again with the mixer. The dough should now be thinner, but still hold together.
• Lightly grease the sides of a silicone baba mould with eight cavities. Place the baba mould on a baking tray. Divide the dough evenly among the cavities of the mould. Fill each cavity no more than two-thirds full. Leave the dough to rise in a warm, humid place for at least 2 hours, until it reaches the top edge of the cavities.
  Preheat the oven to 170 °C. Bake the babas for 20 minutes. Remove the babas from the mould immediately after baking and leave them to cool.
• Make the syrup. Use a vegetable peeler or grater to remove only the orange part of the orange peel.
• Pour 650 ml water into a saucepan. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla pod into the pan. Add the vanilla pod, caster sugar, cinnamon stick, star anise and grated orange peel. Bring the water to the boil, immediately remove from the heat and leave the syrup to cool.
• Pour the cooled syrup into a large, absolutely clean preserving jar and add the rum. Submerge the babas one at a time in the syrup, taking care not to break them. Seal the jar tightly. Leave the jar in the refrigerator for at least 5 hours.
• Serve the babas by carefully lifting them out of the glass jar with a clean spoon and placing them on plates.
• Pour a spoonful of rum syrup over each baba.

By the way, feel free to adjust the amount of rum in the syrup to your taste. Neapolitans use very little or no rum, while Parisians enjoy a much more generous amount of alcohol. Anything goes! The babas will keep for a week in the glass jar, provided it is truly spotless.

Title: Big Mamma’s Cucina Popolare
Author: Big Mamma
Price: €35
Publisher: Good Cook

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