Rum Cake
Traditional rum cake from scratch－no mixes－just pure homemade goodness. Light, tender, topped with chopped pecans, and drizzled with an addictive rum glaze. So good, you’ll want to eat the whole thing.
Boozy rum cake – Oh YES!!!
Let me tell you about this cake and how delightful it is. I adapted it from Carole Walter’s absolutely BEST yellow cake. I guess when you label a cake the absolute best, you’re bound to get a lot of people poking at the recipe. However, I have to say that it is sooo good – definitely a keeper.
Okay, let’s keep going. What makes this cake worthy of your time? The texture is buttery and fluffy–one that would have made my home economics teacher leap with joy. Now, if only I had this recipe when I was taking my finals in school, just maybe, I would have gotten an A in her class. Sadly, though, I got a B.
Why Rum Makes a Yellow Cake Even Better
You know me, your girl can’t help herself. I had to make a few adjustments for an easier and even better cake. Guaranteed to please! I reduced the sugar to 1¾ cups and upped the flavor with rum and nutmeg. Yes, I love nutmeg, but you can leave it out if you want.
Besides adding moisture, rum also adds depth of flavor and a light caramel taste. Did you know that alcohol also breaks down gluten for a more tender crumb? It also carries the flavors from fats and water-soluble ingredients for better distribution.
And don’t worry about the alcohol content, because it evaporates during baking and cooking. So that means it’s still kid-friendly.
How to Make Rum Cake
- Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy and starting to look white, 5-7 minutes. (Photo 1)
- Beat in the eggs, one at a time, adding a tablespoon of the flour with the last egg to prevent the batter from curdling. (Photo 2)
- Add the flour, powdered milk, and baking powder into the batter, alternating with the milk until fully combined. (Photo 3)
- Stir in the rum, vanilla extract, and nutmeg, and mix until everything is fully combined. (Photo 4)
- Line the bottom of the greased bundt pan with chopped pecans. Pour the batter over the pecans. (Photos 5-7)
- Bake at 325℉ (160°C) for 55-60 minutes or until a tester comes out clean. Remove from the oven. Let it cool for about 10 minutes before flipping it out onto a cake plate. (Photo 8)
- Rum sauce. In a small saucepan, bring the butter, sugar, rum, and water over medium heat to a boil and simmer for 3-4 minutes. Stir constantly to keep it from burning, then remove from the heat and cool slightly. (Photos 9-10)
- Poke little holes into the cake with a toothpick or skewer. Spoon the syrup over the cake and let it soak in. Let the cake cool to room temperature before slicing and serving.
Tips and Notes
- Dark rum adds a deeper color and flavor. But you can use the light if that’s what you have; even spiced rum provides delicious results.
- If you prefer skipping the rum glaze, a simple syrup, vanilla glaze, chocolate glaze, or both works fine. You can also completely leave the glaze off.
- Let the cake cool for 5-10 minutes before removing it from the pan so it firms up and holds together better.
- If you want a more spiked rummy flavor, go ahead and add more rum to the glaze after taking it off the heat! I won’t tell.
- If your cake ends up drier than you want, soak it with more rum glaze.
Make Ahead and Storage
Rum cake tastes even better after it has had time to soak in the rum sauce. It should last fine for 3-4 days at room temperature, a week in the fridge, or 5-6 months in the freezer.
If you freeze individual slices, you have an emergency sweet tooth fix or a treat for surprise guests. Thaw it quickly in the microwave and enjoy.
More Decadent Holiday Cakes to Enjoy
By Imma
Watch How to Make It
[adthrive-in-post-video-player video-id=”yhMs8hHB” upload-date=”2019-05-07T07:00:44.000Z” name=”Rum Cake” description=”Rum Cake – traditional rum cake from scratch – no mixes. Light & fluffy topped with chopped pecans and soaked in a reduced sugared rum glaze. So good you would want to eat the whole thing.”]
This blog post was originally published in October 2018 and has been updated with additional tips and gorgeous new photos.
Rum Cake
Ingredients
The Cake
- 10 ounces (285g) unsalted butter
- 1¾ cups (350g) sugar
- 4 large eggs
- 2½ cups (300g) all-purpose flour
- ⅓ cup (35g) powdered milk
- 1 tablespoon (12g) baking powder
- ½ teaspoon (3g) salt
- ½ cup (118ml) milk
- 1-3 tablespoons (15-45ml) dark rum
- 1 teaspoon (5ml) vanilla extract
- ¾ teaspoon (2g) nutmeg
- 1½ cups (170g) chopped pecans
Rum Glaze
- 4 ounces (113g) butter
- ½ cup (100g) sugar
- ¼ cup (60ml) water
- 3-4 tablespoons (45-60ml) dark rum
Instructions
The Cake
- Preheat the oven to 325℉ (160°C). Grease a 10-inch tube or bundt pan and set it aside.
- Cream the butter and sugar at high speed in a stand mixer until fluffy and starting to look white, 5-7 minutes.
- Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well between each one and adding a tablespoon of the flour with the last egg to prevent the batter from curdling.
- Add the flour, powdered milk, and baking powder into the batter, alternating with the milk until fully absorbed by the mixture.
- Then add the rum, vanilla, and nutmeg. Stir well until everything is fully combined, scraping down the sides of the mixing bowl as you go.
- Add the chopped pecans to the bottom of the greased cake pan. Then pour in the batter on top of the pecans.
- Bake at 325℉ (160°C) until a tester inserted into the center comes out clean, 55-60 minutes. Remove from the oven. Let it cool in the pan for about 10 minutes, then flip it out onto a cake plate.
- Pour batter into a bundt plan , on top of the pecans.
- Bake at 325 until a tester inserted into the center comes out clean, 55-60 minutes. Remove from the oven. Optionally, pour half of the rum glaze over the cake before removing it from the pan, then drizzle the rest over the finished cake.
Rum Glaze
- In a small saucepan, heat the butter, sugar, water, and rum over medium heat. Bring the mixture to a boil and simmer for 3-4 minutes, stirring constantly to prevent burning.
- Remove from the heat and let it cool slightly.
- Poke little holes in the cake with a toothpick or skewer. Drizzle the syrup over the cake and let it soak in. Let it cool to room temperature before slicing and serving.
Tips & Notes:
- You can use one large bundt pan or two 8-inch cake pans. If using two cake pans, it will bake faster, so start checking for doneness around 25-30 minutes.
- For cupcakes, like a muffin pan with cupcake papers, fill the wells ¾ full with batter, and reduce the cooking time to 15-22 minutes, depending on your oven. Start checking for doneness at around 15 minutes.
- You can replace the milk and powdered milk with the same amount of evaporated milk. If using condensed milk (like Eagle Brand), reduce the sugar by ⅓ cup, or it might end up too sweet.
- A cake that doesn’t rise could have various reasons. First, check the baking powder’s expiry date. Second, the oven temperature was off. And third, overmixing deflated the batter.
- Please keep in mind that nutritional information is a guesstimate and can vary greatly based on the ingredients used.
Your recipes always yield great results. This was no exception. Yet another immaculate bite.
Thank you 🙂
Hi I’m planning on making it this weekend. What kind of milk and flour did you use? I’m guessing plain flower and maybe skimmed milk? Please correct me if I’m wrong, thank you 🙂
*flour
You can use whatever milk you have. I prefer whole fat, but you can even use coconut milk. The flour is all-purpose, no need to worry. 🙂 Please let me know how it goes.
Thank you for another fabulous recipe! I used single barrel rum and couldn’t resist adding a caramel rum sauce.
Great combo, thanks for sharing:)
I usually do not do reviews but I had to comment on this recipe. I always wanted to know the recipe for rum cake. This cake turned out great as all the recipes I have tried. Thanks for the recipe.
Thank you so much, Tracine! 🙂
Hi Imma, what dark rum brand do you use?
Hi Katrina. Usually, I would use whatever dark rum I have at hand. As long as it is not light rum since dark rum has a more intense flavor.
Thanks for sharing the recipe. Clicking “reply” was the only way I could find to comment in here. I made this and mine came out fine but had a dense spongy like texture. I’m not sure if that was from all the eggs or something else but I did not care for the texture. I was hoping for more of a cake like texture (though maybe the sponginess was what better helped it to absorb the added rum at the end…?). It tasted fine other then that. I made mine in muffin pans to cut the time down. I tried a dash or two of nutmeg and some with cinnamon in some of the muffins to see if it would be something I would like. I personally did not like the nutmeg (though it did remind me of egg nog). But I did like the cinnamon. The ones without any spices didn’t have much flavor by itself just sort of sweet and spongy. But obviously 😉 adding the rum on top made them taste even better.
Hi Moriah,
So sorry to hear that.This cake is moist on it’s own without the rum syrup. Really don’t know what went wrong without actually being there.
Could I use powdered buttermilk in place of powdered milk? Powdered milk is surprisingly hard to find here and I don’t have time to order.
Yes you can. Powdered buttermilk works just fine.
Not NEARLY enough rum in this cake or the sauce! Dry and boring! I followed the recipe exactly. Epic Fail.
Failure…..followed the recipe and my cake never rose.
Sorry to hear about that. Make sure you double check your baking powder’s expiration date. I have made this recipe several times with good results.
Add more rum. It won’t be as dry. My experience is that a cake that is a little dry will soak up more sauce. The “dryer” up front, the “saucier” afterward. I haven’t had problems with this bread.
Thanks so much for the tip, Sonofabaker. Love your user name, BTW.
Your Blog is absolutely wonderful! So colorful & detailed a true step by step and the photo guidance & much appreciated and so pretty! Thank you for investing so much time into testing the recipes and for your hard work with your site!
I have watched some of your videos and I find this very amusing. I would love to purchase one or more of your produce and hence would love to how to go about it. I live and work in Lekki.
I would like to know if you can use the eagle brand substitute for the powdered milk as well as the regular milk? Are the amounts of the eagle brand the same?
Hello,
Yes it works just fine. Same amount for both powdered and regular milk.
Can you use rum extract?
It depends. Do you want to completely eliminate the rum butter syrup?
Your recipe sounds great and will try but when do you add rum to cake??????? Not mentioned in directions at all!!!!!!!!
Hi. Thanks for pointing it out. Updated the recipe. The video shows you add rum to the batter before the vanilla extract. It’s also optional (if you don’t wnt your cake to be too “rummy”) since the glaze already has rum in it, too.
Recipe and pics of cake look absouletly devine. Can I substitute the powdered milk with eagle brand milk or evaporated milk? If so, which would be the best?
Thank you. Yes, eagle brand milk works fine, but you’ll want to reduce the sugar by ⅓-½ cup.
Hello couple of question on your run cake. 1. Do u used cake flour?
2. Can u used pet or eagle brand milk?
Hi Frances,
In this recipe I used all-purpose flour. Yes, you can use Pet or Eagle Brand milk. Happy baking!!!
Hello. Can this recipe be converted for cup cakes?
Hello, Dierdre.
Yes, you can. To convert a cake recipe to cupcakes, line your muffin pan with cupcake liners and divide the batter into the wells.
This recipe makes about 24 regular-sized cupcakes, depending on how much batter you use for each one. Typically, you’d fill each well a little more than ¾ full.
Bake them at 325°F (160 ℃) if you want relatively flat tops to hold frosting. If you want a better rise for more rounded tops, bake them at 375°F (190 ℃).
Start checking for doneness about 20 minutes into the baking time. As soon as a toothpick comes out clean, you’re good to go.
Just a question here: can this be made in a half sheet, if I adjust the recipe to about 3 times?
Hi Rebekah. I can’t exactly give an answer to that since I haven’t tried it. But as per my experience, you can use two baking pans with this recipe and just reduce the baking time by 10-15 minutes. I don’t know if this helps, but I hope it does somehow. Let me know how it works for you.
I am planning on making this recipe for easter. What kind od powdered milk did you use?
Thank you in advance.
Hi Fran, Any powdered milk would work. I used whole milk, nonfat works as well.
Happy Easter!!
Can I bake the cake a day before the party then put the rum sauce the next day??
Hi Kathy. Yes, you sure can. Just place the cake in an airtight container and store in a room temperature or in the fridge. You can even soak it in the rum sauce the day before.
Irma is the flour for the rum cake paladin or self rising flour for the rum cake.!
Thanks
Shirley
Hello Shirley, It’s plain flour.
I love your recipes. The Rum Cake is a winner.
Can I use different types of rum (spiced or cinnamon)?
You sure can.
Can you use fireball?
Hi, Dierdre. I haven’t tried fireball but it sounds amazing. Please do let me know how it turned out for you.
Can this recipe be converted for cup cakes?
Yes it can. Adjust cooking times to about 15-22 minutes.