Rum Cake

A collegue shared a piece of an awesome rum cake a little while back. After I recovered from the buzz, I asked for a recipe.  Thank you Mark!

Cake:

1 box cake mix (vanilla or chocolate, could also be crazy and use strawberry or whatever)
1 box pudding mix (vanilla or chocolate, etc.)
4 eggs
½ cup vegetable oil
½ cup water
½ cup rum (Myer’s Dark Rum)
½ cup sour cream

Put the cake and pudding mixes in a bowl, then add the rest of the ingredients. I beat the eggs before I put them in the mix. Once it was mixed fairly well by hand I used an electric mixer until it was smooth. Put mix in a bundt pan and cook for 1 hour at 325 degrees.

Notes:

I found that the chocolate mixes were lighter and stayed in the proper shape after cooking. With the vanilla ones, the middle of the cake sinks down a bit once the glaze is added. Both taste equally great.
Leave the cake in the pan for 20-30 minutes before applying glaze.

Glaze (you will need to do this TWICE, once for the bottom of the cake, then again for the top):

½ stick of butter
½ cup white sugar
1/8 cup water
¼ cup rum (darker the better. I used Captain Morgan Black, but I was making enough cakes to warrant buying two bottles of rum! Myer’s would work just as well, no doubt)

Melt butter on the stove on medium heat. Add the water and white sugar, then mix. Once the mixture is boiling, let it continue boiling for 2 to 2.5 minutes. Stir it every 20 seconds or so during that time. Take the mixture off the heat and slowly add the rum, mixing it in as you go. Just to warn you, there will be a lot of steam when you do this!

Use a fork or a skewer and poke holes in the exposed part of the cake in the pan (what will eventually be the bottom). Apply the glaze to the cake in one of two ways:

Pour it on. Less effective, but quicker.
Use a brush to apply the glaze in layers.

If applying with a brush, you can do it two ways:

Apply glaze waiting just 2 or 3 minutes between layers. The glaze will still be hot when it has all been applied, and it will all soak into the cake this way.
Wait 10 minutes between applying layers of glaze. The last few layers will be cooler and won’t sink in, creating a layer of icing on the cake.

For best effect, leave the cake in the pan for 2 hours after you glaze the bottom, letting the glaze soak in. Then, turn the pan over onto a plate to remove the cake.

Repeat the steps for creating the glaze. Poke holes in the top and sides of the cake, and apply the second batch of glaze.

If you wanted to do this more quickly, you could cook ALL of the glaze at one time (1 stick of butter, 1 cup of sugar, ¼ cup of water, and ½ cup of rum, boil for 5 minutes instead of 2 to 2.5), apply half to the bottom of the cake, then immediately remove it from the pan and apply the other half to the top of the cake. I can’t vouch for the taste if you do it this way, but since it’s still rum cake, it will probably be great nonetheless.

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