Pardon the Cookie Interruption!

Rum Cake
Originally uploaded by lasassone

I had to take a break from cookie making yesterday because tonight we are going to our Garden Club Holiday pot luck dinner.

I have always made a rum cake to have for our family's Christmas dinner's dessert, but for this years club pot luck I'm taking potato salad and I made this rum cake instead of the stuffed eggs I usually take to share.

This recipe is flexible depending upon the kind of cake mix you have on hand. I usually search out a cake mix with NO pudding in it, but all I had this time was one that said it contained pudding. I'm not sure how much it had because this cake didn't bake up as high as normal. In the future I think I would add the pudding regardless.

With this recipe you can use a large bundt cake pan, an angel food cake pan or it will make 4 to 6 mini loaves as well. The number depends upon the size of your mini-loaf pans.

I will list this with the changes for a mix with pudding in parenthesis.

RUM CAKE

1 Yellow cake mix (1 yellow cake mix w/pudding)
1 sm. pkg vanilla instant pudding (omit)
4 eggs (3 eggs)
1/2 C. cooking oil (1/3 C. oil) - I used Crisco oil....
1/2 C. very Cold water (same)
1/2 C. Rum (same)
finely chopped nuts of choice (same)-Optional

1) Grease and Flour your pans, tapping out any extra flour. Preheat oven to 350 F
2) Sprinkle Nuts in the bottom of pan (optional).
3) Combine all ingredients in large bowl; beat till very smooth.
4) Pour into pan(s).
5) Bake at 350 F for 40 to 60 min. for large pans, less for small loaf pans.
6) Cool 25 min. in pan(s).
7) Turn out and poke holes in bottom (nut side) with a toothpick or skewer.
8) While cake(s) are warm, spoon over a glaze made with:

1/8 pound of butter melted in pan
1/8 C. water and 1/2 C. sugar stir into melted butter & boiled for 4-5 min, stirring constantly.
1/4 C. Rum added after removing from heat.

If desired you can drizzle with a glaze made by melting 4 oz. of semi-sweet chocolate and 1 t. butter, melted over low heat.

NOTES:

1) As I said, I think next time I will put the pkg of pudding in regardless of what the cake mix box says.

2) I didn't put the nuts in before baking. I sprinkled a little ground pecans before spooning the warm glaze over the cake.

3) For glaze I used a little canned dark chocolate frosting and drizzled it over the cake to make it a little prettier. A disadvantage to doing that is that my drizzles didn't harden like I thought they would.

Now back to searching Lulu's recipe book for cookie recipes!