Chocolate Rum Cake

I love rum cake. I just love it. I first experienced this yummy goodness when my college buddies and I all went on a Spring Break cruise to the Caribbean Senior Year at UF. While in Grand Cayman we went to the Tortuga Rum store where we sampled just about every flavor imaginable of this confectionery wonder. Of course I am always partial to the chocolate persuasion. I ended up buying four cakes on the ship to take home, I gave three away to my family and kept one to devour myself, along with a bottle of Tortuga rum with the intention of one day making my own cake. The next year I went on another cruise and promptly repeated the pattern, only this time I saved one to be enjoyed by myself and my husband, even though he was only my boyfriend at the time. For our honeymoon we went to Jamaica and yet again they had these little wonders all over. This time we only brought back the mini ones and gave all but one away. So after scouring the internet high and low, today I decided was the day to finally use that bottle of rum to make the long awaited cake. I found a couple recipes online and decided to tweak them to suit my own tastes and needs. So here it goes.

Cake Ingredients:
1 18.5 oz box Devil's Food Cake Mix (NOT the one with pudding in the mix, I used Duncan Hines Super Moist)
1 1.75 oz box of Jello Chocolate Fudge Instant Pudding Mix (I used the sugar free kind)
4 eggs
1/2 cup cold milk (I used skim)
1/2 cup oil (I used canola)
1/2 cup Tortuga Gold Rum (any dark rum will do though)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees, and spray a fluted tube pan (Bundt pan) with lots of cooking spray or Pam. Mix all cake ingredients in bowl of electric mixer or with hand mixer on medium-high for 2 minutes, then transfer to greased pan and bake for 55-60 minutes. Cake is done when knife or tester inserted comes back clean and cake is springy. Remove from oven and cool in pan on cooling rack. While cake is cooling make glaze.

Glaze Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter (one stick)
1/4 cup wataer
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup Tortuga Gold Rum (or any dark rum)

To make glaze melt butter on high in a medium saucepan. After butter is melted add in water and sugar. Allow to boil and then turn down heat and continue stirring constantly for 5 minutes. Syrup should thicken become bubbly. Be careful, this could overboil if not stirring constantly. I didn't turn down the heat, so I think the glaze thickened too much and the sugar ended up crystallizing again, as seen in the photo below. Remove from heat and add in rum, again be careful, it tends to steam when rum is added. Stir everything together. Pour some glaze onto cake while it is cooling in the pan on the rack. Allow glaze to soak in, poking cake with a fork a bit tends to help the glaze seep in. Allow the first pour of glaze to seep in and then keep adding more glaze until it is all soaked in and your pot is empty. Here's how it looks when the glaze is poured on it:

Allow cake to cool completely in the pan and then invert onto a serving platter or cake plate. Cake will be very moist and therefore cannot be moved around very much. Eat when fully cooled. Enjoy!