Deux gâteaux : le « savarin » et le « baba »

My old friend CHM and also Bob R. asked about my savarin recipe, and differences between a savarin and baba au rhum. Now, I don't have CHM's 80+ years of experience of French food — my experience only goes back 40 years, and only a part of that is direct experience with home cooks in France. He grew up with a French mother and grandmother who cooked the classic French way, from what I understand.

A savarin cake I made in a real savarin mold back when

we first arrived in Saint-Aignan nine years ago.

Here's some information about the savarin from my point of view, based on what I have been reading in two classic French cookbooks, the encyclopedic Larousse Gastronomique and the home cooking classic Je sais cuisiner (by Ginette Mathiot, 1970 ed.).

Ginette Mathiot says: « Le baba se fait comme le savarin, mais on incorpore au dernier moment les raisins de Corinthe qui ont été lavés et épluchés. » — "The cake called a baba is made the same way as a savarin cake, but at the last minute currants (tiny Corinthian raisins) are added to the dough." So Mathiot implies that the savarin came first, and the baba au rhum was a version of it. (Raisins épluchés might sound like "peeled grapes" but I think it must mean raisins without any of the little hard bits of stem that might be left attached to them.)

 This time I baked the savarin in a pyrex ring pan.

The Larousse food and cooking encyclopedia says just the opposite is true. The baba was the original recipe, and a Parisian pastry chef developed the savarin much later:

Baba — Gâteau fait avec une pâte levée mélangée de raisins secs et imbibée, après cuisson, d'un sirop au rhum et au kirsch.

...un maître pâtissier parisien, Julien, en supprimant les raisins de la pâte, en donnant une autre forme à l'entremets, et en modifiant le sirop de trempage (sirop qui resta longtemps un secret de sa maison), créa le brillat-savarin, qui devint le savarin tout court.

Baba — A cake made with risen dough mixed with raisins and imbibed, after it's cooked, with sugar syrup flavored with rum and kirsch.

...a master pastry chef in Paris named Julien, by eliminating the raisins from the dough, giving the cake a different shape, and modifying the soaking syrup (the recipe for which long remained a trade secret), created the brillat-savarin cake, which came to be called, simply, the savarin.

My ring pan made a cake with a gigantic hole in the center. Scroll down a ways
to see the good picture of the cake that I posted yesterday,
where it looks like a big doughnut.

The savarin I made was based on Ginette Mathiot's recipe:

Here's my translation/adaptation of the savarin recipe, with both grams and U.S. measures. I've slightly increased the flour (by rounding up) and the sugar, and I've reduced the amount of yeast (the amount I used was plenty). Tablespoons and teaspoons are level measures using U.S. measuring spoons:

Savarin

250 g flour (2 cups)
125 g softened butter (9 Tbsp.)
30 g sugar (4 Tbsp.)
3 eggs
20 ml lukewarm milk (7 Tbsp.)
8 g salt (1 tsp.)
15 g baker's yeast (I used just 1½ packets or about 8 grams)

Pre-heat the oven to 375ºF / 190ºC.

Put the yeast into the lukewarm milk to proof. Sift the flour into the bowl of a stand mixture and then pour in the yeast/milk mixture. Mix at low to medium speed with the paddle attachment, adding the eggs one at a time, until all is well blended. Let the mixer run for about 5 minutes. Cover the bowl and leave the dough to rise for two or three hours in a warm place.

When the dough has doubled in volume, add the softened butter, sugar, and salt, and mix everything together for another 5 to 8 minutes. The dough should be perfectly smooth.

Pour the dough into a buttered ring or bundt pan, filling it about two-thirds full. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes (the French recipe doesn't specify a cooking time) or until the cake has risen and browned nicely.

While the cake is cooling, make a syrup with 2 cups of water, half a cup of sugar, and a cup of rum, kirsch, Triple Sec, or some other alcohol or flavoring (you could make a vanilla syrup, for example). Poke some holes in the warm cake with a skewer and gradually pour the hot syrup over it so that it all soaks in (I took the cake out of the ring pan before imbibing it). Serve warm or at room temperature.

I'll leave the baba recipe for later. I guess next time I should make that — after I've gone and bought some good rum.