The King’s Baba
King Stanislas of Poland, who reigned over Lorraine from 1737 to 1766, was the ’godfather’ of this delectable dessert. On his exile to Alsace, he discovered the Kougelhopf. As he got older, he began to find the dough a little stodgy and dry. So the royal food lover ordered Gillers, his pastry chef, to garnish the delicious Alsace pastry in his own way. The skilled chef sprinkled the cake with the Tokay wine that Stanislas had ordered to be sent from Hungary. When there was no more of this nectar, Gillers replaced it with a syrup based on rum and the speciality was called a "baba".