If you have ever been in Naples or Campania in general, you would have seen plenty of baba, mainly al rum, which is the traditional, the classic version. Sfogliatelle with ricotta cheese and baba are their traditional pastry, for breakfast with a cappuccino or after lunch or dinner.
If you haven't, the baba is a small cake that has been cooked in the liqueur, the limoncello in this case.
The original recipe says that the baba must be cooked in the liqueur, the problem with most of the baba cake found in shops this side of the channel, is that the baba is cooked in the oven and then put into the liqueur. The problem with this method is that the baba is too wet and soaked that the cake doesn’t keep its shape and the liqueur flavours cover everything else.
Pastificio Oddo has developed a method that cooks the baba in the limoncello so that it the final result taste like it had been freshly made in a Neapolitan pastry shop, and it comes in a lovely jar. To appreciate the full range of flavours, turn over the jar an hour before eating it and it will be like sitting on a Pasticceria in piazza del Plebiscito in Naples, the main square, looking at the Vesuvius whilst eating “o baba’ “. The baba al limoncello won’t get any better than that, guaranteed. The jar is enough for 2/3 people.
Also available al
rum