Rum Cake with Butter Rum Glaze

Photo by Dcn. Bill

Anything you can do in the indoors can also be done outdoors. I have been cooking almost exclusively outdoors for years. It takes a few adjustments, especially in in adverse weather. Fortunately, my outdoor kitchens have always had a roof or covering of some sort. I had originally made this in a cast-iron bread pan. It came out a bit dense and a little too dark on the edges. I used a Nordic Ware bundt pan this time, with much better results. Because of the rose design of my particular pan, the edges have a nice crunch, while the interior of the cake is moist and light. BTW this cake will get better tasting in a day or so, but it is pretty outstanding as it is.


 This cake is pretty straightforward. The glaze, not so much. It starts with a Betty Crocker Pound Cake mix.
The mix calls for two eggs (large) and 2/3 cups of water as well as 1/2 stick of softened butter. Use butter. It is pound cake, after all.

Here is my tweak: Burn the alcohol out of 1/2 cup of your favorite rum. I use Sailor Jerry's. Not my favorite for drinking,but great for cooking. Where this recipe can easily be adopted for the indoor kitchen, this part, burning the alcohol, should not, unless you want to remodel your kitchen, from scratch..... and grow your eyebrows back! hy burn it? Most rum cakes take days to reach an edible product. The alcohol is just to "hot" for the throat for it to be enjoyable. Burning the alcohol concentrates the rum flavor but looses the burn.

Put your reduced rum into a measuring cup and add cold water to make 2/3 cups of liquid.

Now mix and bake, on the propane or pellet grill,  the cake according to box instructions, replacing the water with rum-water mixture.

Allow it to cool for 15 minutes. The cake should still be warm when removed from the mold, but if too warm, the cake will fall apart.

While the cake is cooking, over flame, burn the alcohol from 1/2 to 3/4 cups of rum. We do this for the same reason as before and in the same safe way.

To the hot reduced rum, add 1/2 stick butter and mix until incorporated. Now, remove from flame and stir in sugar until the glaze is thinner than honey, but considerably thicker than water. The idea here is to allow the glaze to soak into the cake, not just sit on top of it. I use confectioner's or powdered sugar. But any sugar could be used. I would avoid brown sugar as its flavor coould over power the rum and butter. Allow the glaze to cool down, but not cool enough to form a skin. For more rum flavor, skip the butter in the glaze. 

Now, here's a nice trick. mix in 1/2 shot of rum, straight from the bottle to the glaze, just before spooning it onto the cake. This gives the hint of burn that tells people it is a rum cake, without adding any significant alcohol content to the end product.

As I alluded to, slowly spoon the glaze all over the top of the cake, allowing it to soak into the cake.

After the cake has cooled, dust with powdered sugar. This is purely aesthetics, but remember, we eat with our eyes first.

A note about the picture, yes that is a Corelle Ware pattern from the 1970's. We got place settings for about 72 as wedding gifts. The stuff is almost indestructible, which is why we still have so much of it. They have been our everyday dishes for 33 years.