Baba au Rhum

If you want to start a fight with a French person, tell them that baba au rhum is Polish. The emblematic French dessert of mini brioche soaked in rum syrup is the work of the Polish King Stanisław I’s pastry chef. The king, exiled in France in the early eighteenth century, legendarily rejected a dry yeasted babka, or kouglof, the Alsacienne yeasted Bundt similar to Poland’s yeasted Easter baba, so the pastry chef soaked it in sweetened alc