Chocolate Rum Cake

Rum Cake

Tropical islands conjure up certain ideas -- the surf, the sand, the palm trees, the fruity-rum-based drinks. My colleagues and I had enjoyed the surf, the sand, and the palm trees for several days when we decided we needed to have a dose of the latter. Rum.

To that effect, we visited the Bacardi factor and took a tour. For various reasons, I found this tour absolutely hilarious (why is the bacardi mascot a bat? cue dramatic music -- because … (suspenseful buildup)… one day…. Mrs. Bacardi saw a bat. No seriously. That's it). So hilarious, in fact, that I laughed until I cried. Yes. Tears streaming down my face. Hilarity. No one else seemed to find the tour quite as funny as I did, but they found my hilarity contagious and soon began to see the funny side.

When we were getting ready to leave someone happened to mention rum cake. My only experience with rum cake happened when I was young and the family dog, Coco, a petite 12 lb terrier, managed to eat a half a rum cake. Madness. Complete madness.

We were having a day of fun and decided upon leaving the bacardi factory that we should make a chocolate rum cake and watch Madagascar. This involved a frantic dash to the best buy and the grocery store for said supplies (mere moments before they closed!), and a traffic filled drive back from San Juan.

By the time we got back, we were definitely ready for some rum cake. We started strong -- Lindsey and Laurie were super excited!

When the rum cake came out of the oven it looked and smelled delicious! So delicious that we decided that waiting to cut it / using plates was just too much -- we would eat it right from the pan.

It was an evening of fun -- lots of fun, lots and lots of rum cake eating … (sorry for the dark pictures to follow!)

In fact, we managed to finish the rum cake off entirely…

Which then led to yet another overdose of fun…

A few days after the rum cake / Madagascar incident, when everyone left and went back to cold, wintery, new england, I got texts from most of these people saying "well this sucks"… if you don't know why this is hilarious, go watch Madagascar!)

Chocolate Rum Cake (adapted from this recipe)

Cake: 

1 package (18.25 oz) chocolate cake mix
1 package (3.9 oz) instant chocolate pudding mix
4 eggs
½ c water
½ c vegetable oil
½ c rum

Glaze:
½ c butter
1 c sugar
¼ c rum
¼ c water

Preheat oven to 325.

We used an aluminum foil casserole dish to mix and bake the ingredients. It worked well!

Mix cake mix, pudding mix, oil, ½ water, and ½ c rum until well mixed.

At first this seemed like fun.

But it requires a lot of furious mixing…

Bake at 325 for about an hour and 15 minutes (or 50 minutes if you use an actual bundt pan…)

Make the glaze -- melt the butter, mix in the sugar, rum and water. Bring to a boil and cook for 2 minutes.

Pour the glaze over the warm cake.

And enjoy! Just try not to overdose on fun!