Cherry Baba

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“Baba au Ruhm” is allegedly a classic French cake. I learned about it watching an episode from a beloved Danish cooking programme. The theme of that episode was Russian food. In this version, rum and raisins are replaced with fine Italian cherries. Enjoy!

Ingredients

For one cake, 10 to 12 servings

  • 25 grams of cake yeast. (or 8 grams of dry yeast)
  • 350 grams of plain flour.
  • 1 dl of warm water.
  • 1 dl of milk.
  • 100 grams of sugar.
  • A touch of salt.
  • 3 eggs.
  • 100 grams of butter.
    • Salted or unsalted butter will do. Get it out of the fridge early so that it softens.
  • One vanilla pod.
  • A jar of Amarena wild cherries in syrup.
    • 150 g. drained, 400-460 g. net weight.
  • A suitably greased cake tin. E.g. with a knob of butter.

For the cherry syrup

  • Some of the syrup from the jar of cherries.
  • An additional 100 grams of sugar, 1 dl of water.
  • You may add a shot of rum or other suitable spirit to your syrup.

Method

  1. Mix milk and warm water. It should be hand warm. Stir yeast into the mix and leave it.
  2. Mix your eggs well with the paste of a vanilla pod. Mashing the vanilla bean paste into a little plain sugar first will help it mix more easily.
  3. Sieve your plain flour, sugar, and salt into a bowl.
  4. Make a small valley in the bowl of dry ingredients and pour in the yeast mix.
  5. Stir the egg mix in about one egg at a time. The final batter should have a consistency suitable for pouring into the cake tin later, without being to liquid.
  6. Mix the batter well and add slices of the butter on top. Cover and leave for one hour of proofing.
  7. Strain the jar of cherries from its syrup and cut these in half.
  8. Mix the cherries and butter into the cake batter. Add to a greased cake tin. It should be about half full. Cover again and let it rest for another 45 minutes.
  9. Bake the cake at 230°C for 10 minutes, then turn it down to 175°C and continue baking for about 30 minutes. Let it rest for a while when finished baking.
  10. While waiting for the cake, prepare a piping hot cherry syrup to your own taste.
  11. Do pour plenty of syrup over the cake. The cake absorbs better while still warm.

Serving Suggestion

Serve the cake freshly baked with a homemade fruit salad as shown.

I prefer to bake this cake in a bundt cake pan with a hole in the middle. In part because it looks nice with the fruit salad in the middle, but also because the cake will also bake far more evenly in this type of pan.