Babà Napoletano al Rum Bundtlettes #BundtBakers

These babà Napoletano al rum bundtlettes are a traditional Italian dessert baked in an unconventional pan that does them proud. The hole in the middle gives extra surface area for absorbing the rum syrup and that is a very good thing!

This month my Bundt Bakers group is recreating Italian sweets as Bundts. I could only think of two off the top of my head, panna cotta and tiramisu so clearly some research into Italian dessert recipes was going to be necessary. In my typical fashion, I used Google Translate to figure out what “dessert” and “recipe” are in Italian, then I use those terms to search.

Sure, I could probably find some authentic recipes in English but what fun is that? I know I’m weird but I find it amusing to search in other languages, even ones I don’t speak. It adds another layer of challenge.

Babà Napoletano al Rum Bundtlettes

This recipe is adapted from one on Misya.info, a food diary written by a Neapolitan who learned to cook from her mother and grandmother. She assures her readers that babà is a typical sweet of the Neapolitan tradition, perhaps it is even the typical Neapolitan dessert par excellence. I was charmed by her write-up, published on the very day she was getting married.

Ingredients
For the dough:
1 teaspoon dry active yeast
2 tablespoons warm milk
2 tablespoons sugar plus extra for pan
4 large eggs, at room temperature
3/4 teaspoon salt
3 1/4 cups or 406g flour
1/2 cup or 113g butter, at room temperature, plus extra for pan

For the rum syrup:
1 1/4 cup or 250g sugar
1/2 cup or 120ml water
1/2 cup or 120ml dark rum, divided
Zest 1 small orange (peel off just the orange part, not the white pith)

Method
In the bowl of your stand mixer, combine the yeast with the sugar and warm milk. Leave to prove for a few minutes. The yeast should start bubbling.

If the yeast is active, add in the eggs, butter and salt and half of the flour.

Beat for about 10 minutes on medium speed, scraping the bowl down with a spatula occasionally.

Now add in the rest of the flour and beat until the dough is stretchy and pulls away from the sides of the bowl. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth and leave the dough to rise in a warm place for about an hour.

Turn the dough out onto a clean buttered surface and knead the dough again. Divide it into 12 pieces. Tuck them into neat balls.

Butter and sugar your bundtlette pan.

Arrange the dough evenly inside the prepared pan, by making a hole in each ball and lowering it into the bundlette holes.

Cover lightly with greased cling film and leave it a warm place to rise for 30 minutes.

When rising time is almost up, preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C.

Bake your babàs for 20-25 minutes or until they are golden and well risen.

Meanwhile, put the sugar, water and orange peel in a small pot with half of the rum and bring the mixture to a rolling boil for a few minutes. Remove from the heat then add in the rest of the rum and stir.

Discard the orange peel.

When the babàs are baked, remove the pan from the oven. Remove each babà from the pan and spoon in about three teaspoons of syrup into each hole. Carefully place the babà back in the hole so it can absorb the syrup.

Prick the tops of the warm babàs and brush the syrup on slowly so it has time to soak in.

Keep brushing the syrup on the top and occasionally adding a bit more to the pan holes until all the syrup has been absorbed.

Turn the babàs out onto a serving platter. (I must confess that I had to trim just the tiniest bit off the bottom so they'd stand up straight.) The Italian recipe doesn’t mention this but you can serve the babàs with extra rum or even vanilla ice cream and rum. They make a wonderful dessert!

Enjoy!

Check out the rest of the wonderful Italian sweets recreated as Bundts below. Many thanks to our host Patricia of Patyco Candybar for this fun theme.

• Babà Napoletano al Rum Bundtlettes from Food Lust People Love
• Frosted Tiramisu Bundt Cake from Making Miracles
• Tiramisu Cake from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Torta al Limoncello With Homemade Limoncello from Sneha's Recipe
• Torta Caprese al Limoncino from Patyco Candybar
• Spumoni Bundt Cake from Palatable Pastime

#BundtBakers is a group of Bundt loving bakers who get together once a month to bake Bundts with a common ingredient or theme. You can see all of our lovely Bundts by following our Pinterest board. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient. Updated links for all of our past events and more information about BundtBakers can be found on our home page.

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Il Pane di Matera #BreadBakers

A wonderful crusty loaf made in the tradition of Matera bread, or il pane di Matera, from milled durum wheat and a sourdough starter.

Let me start off with a disclaimer. This loaf cannot officially be called il pane di Matera. Yeah, yeah, I know that’s what the title says. Hear me out. Pane de Matera is special, with specific requirements, including not just milled durum wheat (which I have used) but from 100% Lucanian milled semolina grain known as "Senatore Cappelli," which I have not. The water is also supposed come from a local source in the Matera area of Italy. Finally, it should begin with a piece of dough from the previous day’s loaf, with yeast made from a fresh fruit starter. I used a sourdough starter.

Such is the tradition and history behind this loaf that it was given the European Union Denomination of Protected Origin (DOP) which means, just like sparkling wine can’t be called Champagne unless it is produced in the Champagne region of France or random ham cannot be called Ibérico unless it comes from Black Iberian Pigs raised in the Iberian Peninsula region of Spain and Portugal, it must be produced the right way in the right place to be called Il Pane di Matera.

So while I’ve made a valiant attempt at producing my own version of il pane di Matera, and it’s a fabulous crusty loaf, it doesn’t officially qualify for the name. That said, you should make this guy. With all due respect to Italy, it reminds me of my favorite baguette tradition in France and that says a lot.

With the substandard help of Google Translate, I made my bread from this recipe in Italian. That was part of the fun!

Watch this video to see how to shape the dough.

Ingredients
150ml or 160g sourdough starter or 20g brewer’s yeast
3 3/4 cups or 600g Italian semolina durum wheat flour
2 teaspoons sea salt
warm water

Method
Mix your sourdough starter or brewer’s yeast with 6 3/4 oz or 200ml warm water and set aside.
In the bowl of your stand mixer, combine the flour and 1 1/4 cups or 300ml warm water and mix for a few minutes. Mine was too crumbly for the bread hook so I just kept mixing with the K cake beater.

Add in the yeast mixture and beat/knead for five minutes. At this point, I did change to the bread hook.

Add in the salt and knead another few minutes.

Put the dough in a bowl dusted with flour and cover it with cling film. Poke holes the film with a toothpick.

Leave to rise for two hours in a warm place.

Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface and put it back in the bowl, covered again for another two hours.

After those two hours are up, you can knead the dough, shape and bake. But at this point I strayed from the recipe I was working with and turned to another source I found online which said that traditionally the dough was left to rise overnight, then it was brought to the communal ovens in the morning to bake. So, after kneading again, I popped the dough in its covered bowl into the refrigerator. If you’d rather skip this step, preheat your oven to 220°F or 104°C, with a pizza stone on a middle shelf, if you have one, and proceed down one more paragraph.

The next morning, I removed the dough from the cold and left it to warm up again.

When it was no longer chilled, I preheated my to 220°F or 104°C with my pizza stone on a middle shelf.

Transfer the dough to a well-floured work surface and knead it. (As you can tell from the photos, mine was still quite slack compared to the dough in the video.

Form the dough into a ball, press a crease in it, and then fold the ball in half.

Flour a baking sheet and transfer the dough to it. Use a sharp knife to slice three cuts into the dough. (See YouTube link above for a visual on this.) According to a source online that may or may not be Wikipedia in Italian (I forget but I read it somewhere and made a note), the three cuts represent the Holy Trinity.

Place the baking sheet on the pizza stone and bake for 15 minutes. Raise the temperature of your oven to 350°F or 180°C and bake for more about 40-45 minutes more, or until the loaf is golden and it sounds hollow when tapped. About midway through, I also slid the loaf off of the baking pan and straight onto the pizza stone.

There were plenty of holes, but I was expecting the rest of the crumb to be more open. Next time, I'm going to let the dough rise just a bit after shaping and before putting it into the hot oven but overall I was extremely pleased, especially with the crusty outside and the enormous flavor.

Allow to cool completely before slicing.

Enjoy!

This month my Bread Bakers group are baking Italian breads and we have a fabulous line up for you. I can’t wait to travel all over Italy, loaf by loaf. Many thanks to our host, Anshie of Spice Roots for all of her hard work and this great theme.

• Casatiello by A Shaggy Dough Story
• Ciabatta Sandwich Rolls by Herbivore Cucina
• Classic Italian Bread by Hostess At Heart
• Cornetti by Gayathri's Cook Spot
• Einkorn Parmesan Piadina by The Wimpy Vegetarian
• Fingermillet and Rosemary Focaccia by Sizzling Tastebuds
• Focaccia Caprese by Sneha's Recipe
• Grissini by Sara's Tasty Buds
• Gubana - An Italian Sweet Bread by The Schizo Chef
• Il Pane di Matera by Food Lust People Love
• Italian BLT Focaccia by A Salad For All Seasons
• Italian Easter Cheese Bread by A Baker's House
• Italian Easter Cheese Bread by Palatable Pastime
• Italian Herb and Garlic Focaccia by Hezzi-D's Books and Cooks
• Italian Stuffed Pane Bianco by Cook's Hideout
• Mini Panettone by Mayuri's Jikoni
• Pane Bianco by Veena's Vegnation
• Pane di Genzano by Spiceroots
• Piadina by Passion Kneaded
• Pizza alla Siciliana by Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Rosemary and Cabernet Salt Focaccia by What Smells So Good?

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page.

We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

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Slow Cooker Lasagna

 Spicy Italian sausage is my go-to meat for lasagna and meatballs. It adds such wonderful flavor! This slow cooker lasagna is easy to put together, plus you can walk away and come back to deliciousness without worrying about it burning in the oven.

Growing up, my older sister and I took turns cooking dinner when my mom went back to work. One of my favorites was the Hamburger Helper with that pasta that looks like lasagna noodles but way skinnier. When my younger sister got old enough to cook too, she often made real lasagna. It was sort of her specialty and I guess it still is.


You really can’t compare Hamburger Helper to real lasagna but I’m going to dare to compare the real stuff with one cooked in a slow cooker. I must confess that it doesn’t look as pretty as a neatly cut square of an oven-baked casserole and the crispy bits around the edges that we all fight over are missing. But all in all, with a huge plus for ease of assembly and hands-off time, it’s quite delicious, especially when made with spicy Italian sausage meat.

Ingredients
2.2 lbs or 1kg spicy Italian sausage, casings removed
4 cups or 360g grated mozzarella cheese.
2 cups or 500g ricotta
12 sheets (about 8 oz or 225g) uncooked lasagna noodles
6 cups or 1475g spaghetti sauce (your favorite)

To serve: freshly grated Parmesan and sprigs of parsley, if desired

Method
Pan fry and drain your sausage meat, breaking it into crumbles. Remove from the heat and allow to cool a little while.

Put about 1 cup or 240ml of sauce in the bottom of your slow cooker. Layer in 3-4 lasagna noodles, breaking off the corners so they sit nicely in your slow cooker. Put the little broken pieces in any gaps.






Mix the ricotta cheese in with the crumbled sausage meat.




Add one half of the meat/ricotta to the top of the noodles.



Then sprinkled on one third of the shredded cheese and add another cup or so of the sauce to the top.




Repeat the process starting with another layer of noodles. Finish with noodles then sauce. You should have one third of the mozzarella left. Put it in the refrigerator for later.




Cook for six hours on low.




After about five hours.


About 1 hour before serving, add the reserved shredded mozzarella cheese. Cover and cook until melted.




To serve, try to scoop up a good cross section of the lasagna through all the layers.

Top with fresh grated Parmesan, if desired. That’s non-negotiable in our house. A little parsley adds color as well.




Enjoy!

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