Becky Newell’s Rum Cake
This is a cake recipe I got from Becky Newell, wife of Steve Newell, a research scientist at the University of Georgia Marine Institute on Sapelo Island while we were living on the island. Tnis is not a diet friendly dessert, but it makes a nice occasional treat. The recipe calls for a 10” tube or bundt cake pan, but one could probably also bake this as a one-layer sheet cake. The baking time for a sheet cake would be shorter, maybe 35-40 minutes.
Ingredients:
Cake:
8 1/2 oz box of yellow cake mix (e.g. Duncan Heinz)
1 small (6 oz) package of instant vanilla pudding (Jello or store brand)
1 cup of chopped pecans
4 eggs
½ cup of cold water
½ cup of vegetable oil
½ cup of dark rum
Glaze for cooked cake:
¾ cup sugar
¼ pound (1 stick) of butter (or of good quality margarine such as Can’t Believe Its Not Butter)
¼ cup of water
½ cup of dark rum
Preheat oven to 325oF.
Grease and flour the tube or bundt cake pan.
Beat all cake ingredients together (I use a stand mixer and mix at medium-high speed for 3 minutes).
Pour batter into greased and floured cake pan, put in pre-heated oven and bake for 1 hour (I put the cake pan into a flat baking pan for ease of handling when removing from the oven.)
When done, remove cake from oven and put on wire rack to cool
While cake is cooling in the pan, make the glaze: melt butter or margarine in a saucepan, stir in water and sugar. Heat to boiling and boil 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Then take saucepan off of heat and stir in rum.
While cake is still warm, prick top of cake in pan all over with a fork. Spoon hot glaze all over cake, allowing glaze to soak in.
After glaze has soaked into cake, and cake has cooled, loosen cake from sides of pan by gently running a thin knife blade around the edge of the pan, including around the hole in the middle of the pan.
When cake is sufficiently loosened, put a plate over the top of the cake pan. While holding the plate and pan together on two sides, quickly invert the cake and plate. Gently remove the cake pan from the cake on the plate. The cake should stay intact, hopefully.
Store the cake in the fridge until ready to serve.