Changes

Bender, a town in what is now Transnistria (between Moldova and Ukraine), was where King Charles stayed for a few years after Poltava and the only place in the Ottoman Empire where Stanisław spent any amount of time. He never was in Constantinople, let alone in an Ottoman prison. Eventually (1714), Charles gave him the Swedish-owned Duchy of Two Bridges (now Zweibrücken, Germany), where the former Polish king, inspired by Ottoman architecture, built himself a little palace he called Tschifflik (from Turkish ''"çiftlik"'', or "farm"). Unfortunately, Stanisław had to move out after his Swedish protector passed away (1718), so he moved to a modest palace in nearby Wissembourg. It's a town in Alsace, a border region which by that point had belonged to France for almost forty years, but was still mostly German-speaking (Alsace would later change hands between Germany and France like a ping pong ball, eventually staying with the latter). Maybe Stanisław would have stayed there for the rest of his life, if not for an unexpected visit by matchmakers from Versailles, who asked him for his daughter's hand in the name of King Louis XV of France. And so Princess Marie Leszczyńska married Louis, seven years her junior, and proved to be an ideal a perfect wife (she would give him ten children without getting much in the way of his many extramarital liaisons), while her parents, who wanted to be closer to their only living daughter, moved into Chambord, one of the most luxurious ''châteaux'' of the Loire Valley.

The Polish word ''"baba"'' is unusually rich in meanings. In its original Proto-Slavic sense, it refers to a grandmother or, by extension, any elderly lady. In old Polish, the same word was used for any peasant woman and is still used to describe an uncouth, boorish hag. Other meanings include "female street vendor", "herbalist", "midwife" and "witch" (as in the most famous Slavic witch, Baba Yaga). A ''"baba"'' may even refer to a married or widowed woman of any age, as in ''"moja baba"'', or "my wife". You can use the diminutive form, ''"babka"'', for a young and attractive woman, much like the ''"babà"'' in the Neapolitan dialect of Italian. But don't overdo it, because if you diminutize the word even further, you're gonna get a ''"babcia"'', or "granny".<ref>{{Cyt

So which of these multiple meanings gave rise to ''"baba"'', the bundt cake? Did the cake use to resemble a [https://www.google.com/search?q=baby+kamienne&tbm=isch pagan stone idol,] which is also called ''"baba"'' in Polish? Or does the cake's name come from its resemblance to a peasant woman's long pleated skirt? Or perhaps, it comes from the fact that it's always been old women who were most experienced in the tricky art of yeast-cake baking?

After all, baking a beautiful, tall, airy ''baba'' was one of the most demanding tasks Polish home cooks ever had to face. Great care was needed to prevent the cake from sinking or browning a little too much. A housewife who aimed for the perfect ''baba'' had to start by choosing the best ingredients – high-quality wheat flour, good beer yeast and fresh butter. The oven had to be heated as much as possible, so that it could keep a constant temperature for a long time. The moulds had to be perfectly clean before being filled with dough and popped into the oven. Then came the almost magical practices whose goal was to prevent the ''baba'' from "catching a cold" and falling. Doors and windows were sealed to avoid draughts, women walked on their toes and talked in whispers when close to the oven, and finally, the ''baba'' was gently placed on down pillows for cooling. And , of course, no men were allowed in the kitchen; the baking of a ''baba'' was a ''baby''-only affair.<ref>{{Cyt