Yeast Cake Drenched in Syrup

Babas in the West are small, light yeast cakes moistened with rum-flavored syrup. Western culinary records attribute the invention of this dessert to a seventeenth-century Polish king. One day he was eating a dry, day-old kugelhopf (a raisin-studded yeast cake) when he had the idea of moistening it with rum, and garnishing it with sweetened whipped cream. He was very much impressed by the result. He called it Ali Baba, after an Arabian Nights hero. Thus, probably