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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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3-27-2009 @9:24AM Darrin said... I ALMOST bought one of these when we went on a cruise last year. I definitely will not pass them up when we go again this year!
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3-26-2009 @12:33AM Monika said... Darrin -- Definitely try!! I've had pretty much all of them, and I strongly suggest their banana flavoured rum cake.
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4-10-2009 @1:51PM Lilly said... Tortuga Rum Cake is THE BEST! I always buy up the rum and the cakes when I'm in the Caribbean. I've made the 'Almost Tortuga Rum Cake' a couple of times and it's very good (not quite as good as the original, but it definitely works to cure my rum cake fix. You just have to use good quality rum. I've found a place online that sells bottles of Tortuga Rum and that is what I use for the cakes.
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5-06-2009 @8:29AM Steve Veech said... FYI My company makes a New Orleans Rum Cake made with "Old New Orleans Rum" and it blows Tortuga away! I guarantee it. Try ours and if you find a better one anywhere we'll refund your purchase price. Check out Pirate Alley Trading Company.
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6-08-2009 @2:30PM Forrest said... Hi there,
I think Tortuga cheats and uses artificial rum flavoring in their cakes.
If you read into how they tell their story, it's supposedly some big recipe handed down from mother to daughter. That's all marketing drama. The cake is, in my opinion, essentially a pound cake.
Granted, they have a commercial bakery now and they've added things like xanthan gum, gum arabic, and other "stuff" you wouldn't normally have in your kitchen.
I also wager they use either shortening or margarine and brown sugar. I stick to my opinion about the artificial flavorings!
Now as for the glaze, I am not sure they use something like the recipe above.. I think it's different.
The key here is the rich strong texture of the (pound) cake - it has enough constituents to absorb the glaze while not getting all wet in the middle. In fact, I don't believe they really glaze the cake as copiously as other recipes call for. Hence, the artificial flavoring gives the cake the boost.
Anyone can feel free to prove me wrong :-)
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