What would birthday month be without birthday cake?  The pressure was on this year.  The bar had been set high with last year’s maple bacon cake.  How could you not love a cake that had bacon in it. Anyway, Nana had the answer.  Chocolate Rum Cake.  And what a marvellous way to use up some of the gigantic bottle of ‘bundy’ left over from Nana’s famous Rum Balls.

You will need:
– 4 oz butter softened (about 120 grams)
– 1 cup sugar
– 1/2 cup lukewarm milk
– 2 eggs
– 1 1/2 cups s.r. flour
– pinch salt
– 2 tablespoons cocoa
– 1 dessertspoon rum (ok so I was a little more generous than this)

Do this:

Put butter, sugar and milk into a bowl and let stand for a few minutes. Add eggs, flour, salt and cocoa, sifted together, and beat well for 5 minutes. Add rum and mix well. Turn into a greased and lined 8 inch deep-sided round tin and bake in a moderate oven (180 degrees) for 40-45 minutes. When cold, ice with rum flavoured chocolate icing.

For the icing:

For the icing I used 1 and a half cups of soft icing sugar, 3 tablespoons of butter, 2 tablespoons of rum, 2 tablespoons of cocoa and a dash of vanilla. I beat these all together until the mixture was light and fluffy. I then proceeded to add more rum – this may have been a little too much, but add as much or as little as you want. I felt I had been a little too keen, so to cut through the rum I sprinkled the cake with cacao nibs.  These worked perfectly.

It looked really lovely and definitely held it’s own against maple bacon cake.

Kath & Kate x