Babas with lime syrup

I did now know what babas were until I saw this post on Helen’s blog, a good while ago – her beautiful citrus version immediately caught my eye, but for some reason I did not try my hand at making babas until very recently.

Discovering new desserts is always a good thing, especially when they are very tender and drenched in a lovely syrup – yum! :)

The recipe comes from here – the only change I made was using limes instead of lemons – but the idea of using dariole molds came from here.

Babas with lime syrup
from Donna Hay magazine

1 ½ teaspoons active dry yeast
1 tablespoon caster sugar
¼ cup (60ml) lukewarm milk
1 cup + 1 tablespoon (150g) all purpose flour
1 egg
1/3 cup + 1 tablespoon (90g) unsalted butter, room temperature, chopped

Lime syrup*:
½ cup (100g) caster sugar
1 cup (240ml) water
1/3 cup (80ml) lime juice
shredded zest of 2 limes

To make the babas, place the yeast, sugar and milk in the bowl of an electric mixer and allow to stand until bubbles surface. Add the flour and egg to the yeast mixture. Attach a dough hook to the mixer and beat the ingredients to a sticky dough. While the motor is still running, add the butter, a few pieces at a time, and beat well for about 4 minutes – the dough hook did not work for me, it did not mix the ingredients properly, so I switched to the paddle attachment and it worked beautifully. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, place in a draft-free place and allow the dough to double in size (1-1 ½ hours).
Divide the dough into 6 pieces and place in 6 well buttered 1-cup (240ml) capacity baba molds. Cover and allow to stand until the dough almost fills the pans (30 minutes or so).
Preheat the oven to 180°C. Bake the babas for 15 minutes or until golden brown. Let stand in the pans for 5 minutes.
While the babas are baking, make the syrup: place the sugar, water, lime juice and zest in small saucepan over medium heat. Stir until the sugar is dissolved, then simmer for a further 3 minutes.
Spoon half of the hot syrup over the hot babas still in the pans, set aside for 2 minutes then carefully unmold. Transfer the babas to a wire rack then pour over the remaining syrup.
Serve warm.

* there was plenty of syrup left, I think that half the recipe would have been enough

Makes 6 – I used ½ cup capacity dariole pans and got 8 babas