I’ve enjoyed the rum baba (baba au rhum) bought at a local Italian bakery over the years and kept meaning to try making them myself, but the cost of the molds kept me from the attempt. And then I retired and decided to splurge.
This was my first attempt. I used a recipe I found on line which has now disappeared. It was fine EXCEPT for the fact that it called for a crazy amount of salt. But I followed the recipe – bought the bread flour called for too – even though my baking ‘sense’ was flashing RED. And I was right. The babas took forever to rise and, even after soaking in the rum syrup, they were salty. I ate a couple and then tossed the rest. Now that I have the molds, I’ll probably make them again. Someday. And use a lot less salt.
Soaked baba ready for the cut and a channel cut into the baba for the whipped cream
Prepared mold and risen batter
Baked babas and soaking in the rum syrup
Cooking is Fun ... Really!! 
I wonder if the recipe will reappear with a change in the salt content! It looked good.
I saved the original recipe and link and if I get around to rewriting the instructions with the ingredients corrected, I may post it.
PS: A list of the ingredients. It’s an enriched dough recipe, more liquid than a bread recipe so you almost need to pour/pinch off the batter for each baba.
Rum Baba aka Baba Au Rhum – makes a dozen 3 oz/85 gm babas*
10 oz/283.5gm/~2 cups bread flour
1/2 cup/110 gm warm milk (about 110 deg F)
1/2 oz/14 gm fresh yeast or 1/8 oz/3.5 gm packaged dry yeast
1 stick/ 1/2 cup/115 gm unsalted butter, melted and cooled, plus more at room temperature, for molds
3 large whole eggs, plus 2 large egg yolks
2 tsp granulated sugar
2 tsp salt **
* I ended up with 8 babas of the required size/weight
** reduce to 1/4 tsp salt
Thanks for sharing
It’s unfortunate to have gone through all the effort only to toss the results, how disappointing. Congratulations on your retirement. I’ve been semi-retired for a few years now and still find it amazing how quickly the time flies!
No point in forcing myself to eat it. The next batch will be better, I’m sure.
I’m enjoying the retirement. Teaching in the last few years before retirement were pretty stressful and I wasn’t getting much out of it at the end of the day. I hit 65 and pulled the trigger.