Wondering what makes a marvelous rum cake? Choosing the best rum for cakes is the first step to baking a delicious rum cake. A good recipe is important. But the quality of the rum used in making your cake can affect its entire taste.
Even if you’re not a big fan of rum yourself, tasting a well-made rum cake will make you fall head over heels in love with it.
Simply put, a rum cake in its traditional version is a yellow-colored cake with only a tinge of rum flavor. Topped with a sweet glaze made with rum, when left for a bit, the glaze perfectly soaks into the cake.
Best Rum For Rum Cakes
For a cake whose recipe revolves around rum, the brand and quality of the rum you choose to use in the recipe shouldn’t be overlooked.
Choosing the perfect rum isn’t about picking up the bottle with the largest number on the price tag, but look for brands that offer a great taste based on research and experimentation.
Therefore, based on careful research and hands-on baking by our team, these are the top brands:
Brugal Gold Rum
Produced in the Dominican Republic, Brugal Gold Label Rum is carefully crafted by fifth-generation Rum makers.
This dark rum is guaranteed to give your Rum Cake recipe the boost of balanced, butter, caramel, smooth, spicy, vanilla taste it deserves.
Pussers Rum British Navy
The rum is rich, warming, sweet, somewhat oaked with traces of dark pepper and allspice. It is indeed a red-hot invention.
Bacardi Gold Rum
This brand label produces well-crafted amber rum. With its fine taste, this specific bottle of rum seems to be appealing to numerous taste preferences.
Sailor Jerry Rum
This bottle is a bit on the spicy side. With a 40% concentration, it is considered a strong bottle. Combined with the cake’s recipe, the effect isn’t going to be as strong. However, this rum is for those who prefer a taste of bitterness.
Cruzan Blackstrap Rum
The aftertaste of a strong molasses flavor dominates this rum.
There’s a feeling of hot spices building up in your mouth if you use a large amount in your recipe. But it is not as severe as alcohol burn.
To enjoy the pleasant taste of this rum, it’s better to restrict the quantity to avoid a spicy aftertaste, unless that’s something you prefer.
Captain Morgan Rum
This bottle of rum somehow resembles the taste of Pussers. One of my favorites to use for the best rum cakes, as the sweet smell dominates.
If you’re someone who enjoys the spicy taste of Rum, then this bottle is not for you. Captain Morgan Rum is more on the sweet side.
All the above-mentioned brands are dark rum bottles that are suitable to add to rum cake recipes.
With some experimentation, you are guaranteed to find your new favorite rum cake recipe with these high-quality dark rum bottles.
Tips for Baking with the Best Rum for Cakes
There are two main tricks that you don’t want to skip to bake the best rum cake.
First, when the cake is ready and it’s time to pour on the delicious rum glaze you prepared, make sure to poke a generous amount of holes in the cake.
What makes this tip extra important is that the more holes you poke, the more the rum glaze will penetrate the cake. Leaving you with a mouthwatering rum glaze-filled bite that melts in your mouth.
When poking holes in the cake, make sure to evenly poke holes all over the cake. We don’t want parts that are over-soaked or parts under-soaked!
The second tip is to make sure you’re drizzling the rum glaze extremely slowly all over the cake. Let the delicious rum glaze fill all the holes.
I know that by the time you reach this step, you’re probably drooling over the cake and can’t wait to cut yourself a piece – or ten, no judgement here!
However, taking your time in drizzling the rum glaze all over the rum cake without missing out on any hole is the cherry on top.
Like we all know, the last steps are always the hardest, and what count the most.
With the glaze soaked inside the cake, a high-quality bottle of rum, and the perfect recipe. Every bite of this cake melts into your mouth.
What Kind of Rum Makes the Best Rum for Cakes?
Homemade cakes baked from scratch are so much tastier than their box mix counterparts.
One of the best things about this cake is how easy it is to prepare if only you lay your hands on the perfect recipe and bottle of rum.
That’s why trying a good homemade rum cake recipe will make you never get near the cake mix aisle in a super market ever again.
All of the above-mentioned brands will work perfectly for rum cakes, it all depends on your personal preference.
One thing we can all agree on, that using generic store-labeled rum brands is a definite no-no when it comes to baking a rum cake.
Some people think that the type of rum used in making rum cakes is one specifically made for food purposes. That’s not true.
The typical bottled rum for drinking are perfect for the best rum cake recipes.
FAQs: Choosing the Best Rum for Cakes
How To Store a Rum Cake?
Refrigeration is not necessary for rum cakes, since these cakes mainly consist of butter with other ingredients.
Rum cake tastes marvelous in both scenarios, whether you choose to refrigerate it or not.
Leaving the rum cake on the kitchen counter for a few days won’t spoil the cake, since it consists of sugar and rum which increases the cake’s shelf life.
Even if you decide to add glaze to the cake recipe, don’t worry, glaze does well when kept on the kitchen counter.
However, if you’re someone who enjoys eating cold cakes, refrigerating is a good option.
Can Rum Cake Make You Drunk?
Although the main ingredient in rum cakes is rum which contains a high alcohol percentage, the alcohol gets burned off during the baking process.
Hence, it is not likely that you can get drunk just by eating rum cake.
Can You Freeze Rum Cake for Longer Storage Time?
Freezing the rum cake can increase its storage time for up to three months. Take out the cake from the freezer into the refrigerator for 12 hours or overnight before you plan on serving it.
Racking the cake into the freezer in a sealed freezer bag probably isn’t the best storing method, since the freezer bags don’t protect the cake’s structure.
Therefore, you should store the rum cake in a solid container.
I recommend placing a label on the container with the date the cake was placed into the freezer, for you to know how much time there’s left before the cake goes bad.
Are There Many Variations of Rum Cake?
Nowadays, it’s very rare to find something without many variations to it. People became more open with expirementing around, especially with food.
So, even though rum cakes are especially unique in their ingredients, a few variations have been made to the traditional rum cake.
Not only have the ingredients been pushed a notch, but you’re likely to hear some unfamiliar names of rum cakes as well.
With the number of ingredients we have available today, there are many variations of recipes of a traditional rum cake. Some of these recipes have gone a step further to change or modify some of the ingredients and even its name.
Some of the most popular variations are called Rum Baba, Golden Rum Cake, and Rum-Soaked Cake.
Also, some rum brands require you to use a specifc rum cake recipe to achieve the greatest results such as Bacardi rum.
There’s a rum cake named after the Bacardi rum brand. Combine a specified Bacardi rum recipe with Bacardi rum, and you’ll be amazed by the goodness of the cake.
One of the best rum cakes is also called Black Cake or as some people call it, Carribean Rum Soaked Fruit Cake.
The extras added to the dough which contain a lot of different fruits makes this Black Cake especially unique. Hence, the name “Carribean”.
This recipe is very popular during the hotter seasons, and are great to take on holidays for a fruitful and sweet breakfast or snack.
Conclusion
It’s no big secret that rum cake is a loved dessert amongst people. The deliciousness of this cake, and the Carribean vibes it gives off is what makes it popular.
Not fond of traditional rum cakes? You can even tailor a homemade rum cake to your preferences by making a fun variation of a traditional rum cake, as mentioned in the section above.
There are two big no-nos when it comes to baking rum cakes. One is to use rum extract instead of real bottles of rum. The second is to buy cheap store brand labeled rum bottles. Buying cheap rum bottles will only result in a cheap taste.
The quality of rum definitely affects the rum cake recipe. Just because the alcohol goes through the baking process doesn’t mean that the rum you choose won’t affect the recipe.
The first step towards baking a mouthwatering rum cake starts with finding a suitable rum.
Happy baking!
