December 21, 2016
Rum cake, fruit cake, black cake, great cake – all names for the same thing. Why? Because its got fruit, it’s got rum, it’s dark and it’s just great. Yet another Caribbean Christmas food item I won’t find in the US, certainly not in the Pacific Northwest. I haven’t made my own rum cake before because I’ve always had a source from which I could simply purchase it. I figured now is the best time to test my extremely minimal baking skills. Why? Because it’s the Christmas season. I got my sorrel and I want my rum cake!
Caribbean Pot is the most amazing website out there. It’s got basically all the recipes I need for almost all the foods I crave. Almost. Thanks to Chris De La Rosa, I’ve been able to try a thing or two here: buss-up-shut roti, Caribbean green seasoning, Trini curry chicken and now some rum cake.
His rum cake recipe comes in two parts.
When it comes to making a good rum cake, it doesn’t start the day of baking or even the night before. It starts months before, even an entire year before, maybe longer. Really depends on how much alcohol you’re looking to have soaked into your fruits.
I took Chris’ approach and did the puree then soak, especially because I completely forgot I wanted to make the cake until…last month. I figured it would be more surface area for absorption. There’s a possibility that I could’ve made it a bit more chunky. Haha.
Also, I’ll just make note that I didn’t use Maraschino Cherries due to the crazy processing those cherries go through to look the way they do. Way unhealthy. Instead, I used some dark cherries. This likely changes the fruity tastes somewhat but it’s not something I’d say makes a major difference.
When I took to Google for some rum cake recipes, I found one by Cooking With Ria which was similar but different in enough ways. I ended up using some kind of merged recipe between the two since I didn’t have all the ingredients that Chris had and had pretty much what was in Ria’s recipe. I mainly followed more closely to Chris’ recipe, except I ended up using 3 cups of the fruit instead of 5. I also got a bit confused and threw in the browning sauce before I should’ve, which was last. So my rum cake looks a bit more like chocolate cake than rum cake. Haha. Oh well.
The recipe caters for quite a large amount of rum cake. I’ve basically baked one for myself and threw some in my muffin tin for easy sharing and distribution with others.
I have to say that, for someone like myself who has never baked a cake in her life, let alone rum cake, this turned out way more decent than I expected to. I’ll play around with the recipe until I’ve got something that intensely satisfies my palate. This first batch was decent. It could definitely use more (and slightly more chunky) fruit and some other flavors its missing. It might help to throw the browning sauce in last as well. However, it was moist and still tasty enough that I’m happy to share it with those who’d love to give it a taste.
Symplicity Me 