Many of you are undoubtedly nodding your heads in agreement as you think back to the rum-soaked golden slice of pleasure you savored on warm summer days. Or the Christmas cake that arrives in a package at your doorstep.
Jamaican Rum Cake UK is a moist, golden Bundt cake flavored with rum and doused in rum syrup. While the combination of rum, vanilla, and butter in this cake may sound simple, the resulting flavor and texture are anything but.
Rum Cake UK is not always a tropical dessert. Those of you who are old enough to remember the 1970s and 1980s may recall the boozy cakes we used to whip up from a box of cake mix, a carton of pudding mix, and big dollops of “holiday spirit” — the liquid kind. You could make a Harvey Wallbanger cake. Baking a Kahlua cake. Jamaican Rum Cake UK is another option.
A lot of us no longer use store-bought cake mixes because, well, times have changed. Flour, butter, sugar, vanilla, and eggs stand in for the lengthy list of difficult-to-spell ingredients included on the side of most cake mixes.
Let’s have a party with this Caribbean-style Jamaican Rum Cake UK as 2023 comes to a close and our Year of the Bundt fiesta comes to an end as well.
Don’t worry; we’ve got everyone on the guest list. We’ve created a rum-flavored version for you sober folks. Gluten-free baking? It just takes one change to make a huge difference. For full instructions, please refer to the section below.
- 2 cups (241g) Flour for All Occasions, Unbleached, Jamaica Vibez
- 1 1/2 cups of sugar (298 grams)
- instant vanilla pudding mix (regular, not sugar-free) in a 3.4-ounce packageBaking Powder, 2 Tablespoons
- SALT, 1 TEASPOT
- 8 tbsp softened unsalted butter (around 113g)
- Vegetable Oil, Half a Cup (99g)
- Milk, room temperature, 1/2 cup (113g)
- A dozen little eggs, cold
- Plain or spiced rum, to taste, 1/2 cup (113g)
- Vanilla extract, 2 tablespoons
- Almond flour, optional (1/4 cup/24 grams) for dusting baking dish
Don’t want to use pudding? You can, but the cake will taste less sugary and be drier as a result. For this, you can use 13 cup granulated sugar, 1/4 cup cornstarch, and 12 teaspoon vanilla for the dry pudding mix in the recipe, however we recommend using the original.
In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, sugar, pudding mix, baking powder, salt, butter, and vegetable oil on medium speed until a sandy consistency is reached.
The eggs should be added one at a time after the milk has been mixed in. To recombine any remaining sticky residue, scrape the bowl well and beat for a few seconds.
Add the rum and vanilla and mix well.
- Prepare a Bundt pan that holds 10 to 12 cups of batter.
- Sprinkle the inside of the pan with almond flour for a nutty flavor boost (and to prevent the cake from sticking) and turn the pan to coat evenly; shake away any excess flour.
- Put the batter into the dish you have just set up.
- Spatula-level the batter.
- Cake-baking time!
- The cake needs to be baked for 50-60 minutes. When it’s done, it can be tested using a cake tester, toothpick, or a strand of raw spaghetti pushed into the middle and removed cleanly. Get the cake out of the oven.
- Generate the syrup.
- Allow the cake to rest in the pan while you prepare the syrup:
- 8 tablespoons of unsalted butter (around 113 grams)
- 14 cups (57 g) of liquid
- Sugar, 1 cup (198 g)
- A Pinch of Salt
- Plain or spiced rum, to taste, 1/2 cup (113g)
- Vanilla extract, half a teaspoon
In order to achieve the classic, wonderfully moist texture of a Jamaican Rum Cake UK steeped in rum, be sure to use the whole amount of syrup (above). If you want your cake to have a more traditional consistency, make and use only half of the syrup recipe.
Get out your Bundt pan!
Combine all of the syrup ingredients (except the vanilla) in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil, then decrease heat to low and simmer (without stirring) until syrup thickens slightly about 5 to 8 minutes.
- Take the vanilla out of the heat and mix it in.
- Insert long skewers into the cake in random locations.
- Apply the syrup liberally to the cake.
- Cover the cake (still in the pan) with roughly a quarter cup of the syrup.
- Soak up the syrup, and keep doing so until you’ve used it all.
- Wrap the pan loosely in plastic and leave the cake out overnight at room temperature to cool and absorb the syrup.
- Invert the cake onto a serving plate.
- To serve, gently pry apart the cake’s borders and flip it over onto a dish.
- Don’t try to force the cake out of the pan if it’s stuck. Warm it in the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 10 minutes to loosen the syrup. (If your oven’s upper element gets very hot while preheating, put the cake on a lower rack and tent it with aluminum foil.) Take the cake out of the oven and invert it onto the serving dish.
Enjoy!
Accompany with piping hot beverages. Or not; the cake stands on its own as a delectable treat.
Store for several days at room temperature if well-wrapped (or under a cake cover). Keep frozen for up to a month of storage.
Without alcohol, Jamaican Rum Cake UK
Despite first impressions, you can make a non-alcoholic version of this cake by omitting the rum. This is how:
- Substitute water for the rum and add 1/2 teaspoon of butter-rum flavor for a cake with a subtle rum taste. Instead of rum, use water in the syrup and add 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon of butter-rum flavor at the end of cooking.
- Cake: Substitute water for the rum and add 3/4 to 1 1/2 teaspoons butter-rum flavor for a bolder rum taste