If there was one thing that challenged Key West's proliferation of key lime pies, it was rum cakes. For a while, the Tortuga Rum Company had a little shop on the island -- not only offering a proliferation of cakes to purchase, but every flavor waiting in bins to sample. It was, simply, the most wonderful way to pick sweets to buy.
That store is no longer there, but the cakes continue to haunt shelves across the island. Unfortunately, they're not easy to come by in most other areas, unless you've got a good deal of cash saved up to order the $30-plus large cake online.
That means we must do our best to replicate, and at least one recipe gets close -- Recipe Zaar's Almost Tortuga Rum Cake.
Find out how after the jump.
Put together a bit differently than your normal cake, this recipe requires extra ingredients thrown into the initial butter-sugar mix before the next phase of the process that incorporates wet ingredients and a package of instant pudding. (They say vanilla, but even butterscotch works well.)
After cooking, a whole slew of syrup is soaked into the cooling cake, and a moist piece of deliciousness is the result.
The texture is pretty spot on, and the flavor is as close as the rum you use to glaze it.
A lot of rum goes in, so it's imperative to either use their suggested rum, or pick one with a flavor you love. Otherwise, you'll be stuck with a cake that tastes like a liquor you wouldn't drink straight-up.
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