I spend a lot of time thinking
about food, probably much more than I should. Largely, when I’m not thinking
about recipes to invent, I’m thinking about the food that I enjoyed back in the
old days when I did none of the cooking and all of the eating. Last week, for
whatever reason, I found myself thinking about my mother’s Rum Cake. I didn’t appreciate
this nearly enough when I was a kid. Back then, cake was not cake unless it had
icing, lots and lots of icing. These days I appreciate a simple cake that is
light on topping, but big on taste. Wondering if the Rum Cake was nearly as
good as I'd remembered, I decided that I must make it, and started digging through
one of my favorite possessions, my mother’s
recipe box. I searched recipe by
recipe, TWICE, to no avail. I did find a lot that I plan to try, but no Rum Cake. It was distressing.
Two days later, when I was
talking to my dad, he mentioned that he'd found a piece of paper in
the bread box when he reached for the package of sandwich buns in order to make
himself a nice ham and swiss. Now, he has been using this bread box for nearly three years since mother passed away, and had never seen this slip of
paper. When I asked him what it was, he said that he had set it aside for me
because he thought I might want to have a look at it. You guessed it, it was
the recipe for Rum Cake. (Cue the spooky music.) It is not often that I am
rendered speechless (really, ask anyone), but I was then. It was almost as if
mother was helping me out here.
As it turned out, it was as good as I’d remembered. It
is amazingly easy to make, and yields a tasty, booze-soaked, sinus-opening goodness that
will have you craving it morning, noon, and night. (Not that I would recommend
it in the morning because of the alcohol content, then again, on some days, I
would, so use your own judgment.) Her recipe, exactly as dad found it, is
below. The sizes of cake mixes and pudding mixes, alas, have been reduced. I
had no problem using the current 16.5 ounce cake mix and 3-1/4 ounce instant
pudding.
