• Tag Archives booze

  • Double Rum Cake ~ *Super*Secret*Recipe*

    Posted on by The Thousand Yard Stare Comment

    I used to hear women say, “I wish I could find a man that cooked!”. Being a Gen-Xer (remember those?) I never fully mastered full on cooking but I’m pretty handy at baking. Over time, I’ve found that if you really want to impress some ladies, get your baking mitts on. I’m sure there’s  a whole psychology to it all, but ultimately  who doesn’t like tasty boozy desserts?

    With that said, I felt it was time to divulge my most requested tip-top secret calorie-free* Double Rum Cake. A few things first. This is a no-nut recipe. Even though I’m a fan of the nuts, nobody in my household is. Secondly, I don’t prep my pan until right before I’m about to throw it in the oven. That seems to be backwards, but I like to go my own way.

    double_rum_cake_title

    Prep time: Approx 30 minutes

    Bake Time: 1 hr

    Glaze time: Approx 30 minutes

    pre_cake_mix_title

    1 .5 oz rum (prefer Doorly’s)

    1 large cube of ice

    1 Rocks glass

    cake_parts_mix_title

    (1) Bundt Pan. The flutey kind.

    (1) Package Yellow Cake Mix (16.5oz). Whichever package looks best. I prefer the one that doesn’t have pudding mix in it already, this is a massively-bad-for-you cake.*

    (1) Package Instant Vanilla Pudding Mix (3.4oz).

    (4)  eggs

    1/2 cup filtered water

    1/2 cup vegetable oil

    1/2 cup light rum  or dark rum – this is where it will be up to your particular preference. I like dark rums myself, but if you’re new to the whole rum game, start with a rum that you like and experiment using other rums. There’s more rum in the glaze, so on your first effort, match the rum in the cake and the glaze and as you get more comfortable, mix and match. When you get next level, start trying different sugars and different rums. It’s fun, I promise!

    1/4 cup granulated sugar for dusting the Bundt Pan

    glaze_parts_mix_title

    1/2 cup unsalted butter = 1 stick

    1/4 cup filtered water

    1 cup white sugar (granulated)

    1/2 cup light or dark rum

    Fried Turkey Marinade Injector

    Silicone Brush

    Also Required

    Non-Stick-Cooking-Spray

    An Oven

    A Pair of Hands (or only one, triple prep time)

    A towel

    Hand Mixer (unless you’re a sadist, and prefer a spoon)

    A thin spatula

    down_and_dirty_title
    1. Imbibe – with the pre-cake mix.
    2. Preheat the oven to a crisp 325 degrees F (which if my math doesn’t fail me is 165 degrees Celsius). If you’ve got a convection oven, fire that puppy up.  
    convection

    3. In a large bowl, surgically open the cake mix and pudding mix. Sift them through a sifter together to mix well, alternately, mix them up with a fork – commingle their assets. Sifting takes longer, but impresses anyone who happens to be watching, and the consistency ends up being like cake flour.

    sift

    4. In a small bowl, mix the eggs (like you were making scrambled eggs). Add the 1/2 cup water, 1/2 cup oil and 1/2 cup rum to the egg mixture and whisk well.

    liquid

    5. Add the egg/oil/mixture to the dry mixed powder and then use that Hand Mixer (quaint) or wooden spoon (torturous) until it’s smooth. Use the spatula to make sure all the batter gets mixed, push it back down in the the main mix.

    6. Liberally spray the bundt pan with the non-stick-cooking-spray, especially around the center shaft. Shake the indeterminable (granulated) sugar amount around the bundt pan. It will stick to the spray. Science! Pour the batter into the magical bundt pan.

    7. Bake for 60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean. While you’re waiting, read ahead.

    8. About 20 minutes before the cake is ready, make the glaze. In a saucepan, combine 1 stick (1/2 cup) butter, 1/4 cup water and 1 cup sugar. Bring to a boil over medium heat and continue to boil for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and stir in 1/2 cup rum. Load this glorious mixture into your Fried Turkey Marinade Injector. You won’t fit it all in the injector , that’s where the silicone brush comes in and you can reload as needed.

    injector

    9. About 2 minutes before removing the cake from the oven, put the towel in the sink (seriously!). Wet the towel with hot water. After removing the cake from the oven, put it on the towel. You’re going to leave it for 10 minutes, but while it’s innocently sitting there, you’re going to start basting and injecting it with the special rum glaze. Use the silicone brush first, to slather rum sauce over the bottom of the cake, then take your time and lovingly inject the sauce. I typically use about half the sauce covering the bottom of the cake and injecting, then the other half once the cake is out of the pan.

    cake_towel
    injection

    (My white hand threw off the color balance, so the cake looks sickly now. It’s still the same cake)

    10. After the 10 is up, turn your cake out onto a plate. Use the spatula again to ensure that your cake doesn’t stick to the sides or shaft of the bundt pan. Once it’s on the plate, keep using the silicone brush to brush some glaze on the top and ouside of the cake. Continue to inject the cake with the deadly rum venom until all the glaze is used up. Glaze to taste really. If you see pools of glaze on the plate, you’re going too fast. You can’t consume the rum that isn’t in the cake – take your time.

    11. After you have used all the glaze, stop, admire your work, and let the cake rest. Seriously. You’ve been stabbing it and brushing it for about 30 minutes now.

    MKII

    11. Eat it.

    That’s it!

    I’ve heard that keeping the cake covered in the refrigerator overnight improves the rum flavor, but I’ve yet to have any make it that long.

    * Not Really


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  • “Ms. Currie, in her grand jury testimony, had a fuzzy memory,” Asa Hutchinson

    Posted on by The Thousand Yard Stare Comment

    I’ve got a pretty bad habit of remembering things.  Not entirely intentional, I read somewhere that Albert Einstein once said, “Never memorize something that you can look up.” Recently I’ve used this as a justification for my forgetfulness, but throughout my life I’ve let things slip, much to the dismay of various wives, girlfriends and daughters (not all my own).

    The other night, my own personal haziness came into sharp relief.  I was in a bar discussion (as I am wont to do).

    After I had professed my daughter’s age, I was then prompted for how long I was married. And then I was asked how old I was.  Rather than letting them off the hook, I asked them to do some boozy math.

    giant-math
    During the requisite pause, I did some thinking on it. Like some weird algebraic equation x+y-c did not equal z.  I started rethinking it – double checking my work if you will.
    I couldn’t figure out where I went wrong until I determined that I was quoting an incorrect age when I was actually (previously) married.  How or why would I have done this? Strange?

    My initial stance was that I was married at age 25. After I checked my numbers (carry the two), I realized that I had gotten married at 23.  Young, YOUNG marriage.  When people that age tell me now that they’re going to get married, I immediately think, “Oh wow, too young”. But I never apply my own personal experience to that. Obviously I don’t even remember that I got married that young. Perhaps fatherhood wipes some memories clean? Or was that a part of the raucous 90’s that I was just too…..altered….to remember?  (Amid the nose ring and tattoos?)

    At my nephew’s birthday party the other day, I was talking to one of my brother’s friends and she said, “Yeah, I’m glad to have gotten to have fun before having all our children”, which I guess I can’t relate to on some level. I was married young, but I don’t feel like I consciously “missed out” on my 20’s.  If any thing, my early 20’s were a mishmash of bad decisions as it was, so I’m lucky to have survived most of them.

    My father always carried around index cards with lists of things he needed to remember. We would meet up, and he’d whip out an index card and discuss all the things on the list that he NEEDED to cover, then once we’d finished, he put them away.  As of late, I almost feel like I should be doing that. But, of course, I have a smart phone. So I let Google Calendar take care of most of the heavy lifting. I refuse to let “The Big Blue F” handle birthday reminders. In fact, in one of my periodic disconnects from that site, I deleted my birthday.

    FreeVector-Facebook-Birthday

    Sure enough, my birthday rolled around and there were NO well wishers clogging up my page with birthday status updates. I thought it was curious rather than disturbing. I don’t think any less of my close friends for not remembering since I can hardly remember those things myself (see above for lifelong habit of).  But curious nonetheless.  I’ve taken to sending cards to some of my friends – something I rebelled against for the longest time as something that was “expected” of you rather than doing it just because it’s a nice thing to do.

    Still working on that.


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