Jamaican Black Rum Cake

This is a Jamaican version of fruitcake is usually just called “Black Cake,” with the dark colour coming from burnt sugar and/or molasses. I decided to do the traditional burnt sugar version. Boy did it burn. That was a bit of a gong-show. And having played in a lot of gong-shows, I should know.

But what you really need to know is that there’s about 4 cups of booze in this cake recipe…

Mind you, that’s divided between 4 or 5 fruitcakes (feel free to make a half or even a quarter recipe), and you really only ever have a slice or two at a time, AND the alcohol mostly evaporates during baking, with only a little bit of the optional rum glaze remaining…BUT, it still packs a punch. To diminish the booze-y flavour (which you don’t need to do if you use awesome rum…why am I not sponsored by Cruzan? Seriously.) you can age the cake a couple months or up to 3 years! 2 is ideal. 1 is more than enough. And zero days is alright, too, as long as you don’t mind tart fruit and lots of alcohol with a little cake thrown in there.

Now the reason this makes so much fruitcake is that traditionally when you made fruitcake—or, I should say, when you went to the bother of making fruitcake—you made enough to last a long time and have some to give away as gifts. It’s something decadent you can pull out in the dregs of winter and you’ll have a little bit of sunshine in your life that day. This recipe doesn’t use any preservative-laden candied fruit either, which means you can feel almost healthy about eating it. It’s even low in fat, for goodness sake. Super high in calories because of the dried fruit, but low fat. If you need that creamy, smooth balance, pair it with ice cream (almond dairy-free in my case…again, why am I not sponsored by So Delicious?).

I got the recipe from EatJamaican.com and it comes from the Naparima Girls’ High School Cookbook, but it was re-published in the New York Times. I went with it bcause I know the amount of recipe testing that goes into most everything that makes it into the NYTimes.

I did’t change anything except replacing the flour with a gluten-free flour blend and the butter with soy-free Earth Balance spread. You could also do coconut oil and it’d be great. Maybe even better. You can’t go heavy on the butter in this because the fats are what can go rancid with a long storage time. Hence the more booze and the less dairy and oils, the better for the longevity of the cake. Whether that’s a good thing or not, well, that’s your call.

I used cherry brandy instead of the Concord grape wine business, which sounded sketchy. And after I burnt about half the sugar and it solidified into rock-hard masses in the pot, I scraped the dark liquid and anything that would move into another bowl and added an amount of molasses that seemed an appropriate replacement for the sugar I should have been using. I could have tried burning more sugar, but you have to know when to quit sometimes…Really, it was my fault because I didn’t stir often enough to melt the sugar before it darken. Constant vigilance is not my strong point. If I ever toast sesame seeds without burning them it will be a cold day in Hell.

Oh, the last cool thing about this recipe is that it calls for Angostura bitters. So it’s like you’re making a cocktail in a cake. The bitters just add a tiny, tiny amount of complexity, or so I think because I didn’t make a bitters-free cake to compare. I’m just going to assume that the bitters made this more awesome.

Did I love it in the end?

Honestly, no. It as alright. My dried fruit sweetness balance was off. Too many sour raisins and currants. And I’d left out some of the candied citrus peel, which should have added more sweetness. And if I’d properly burnt the sugar it may have been sweeter than using molasses too. So I guess I did a lot of things differently after all. Shoot. It was still very good. Soft and chewy, like I like my fruitcake. Rich. Tart. Perfect with So Delicious Coconut Vanilla Bean ice cream. If you’re listening, So Delicious, can you please send me a gluten-free cookie dough ice cream to try? I’ve never seen most of your ice creams in my area, and they should be so I can eat them all—one at a time so the person I live with can have some freezer space too.

This was the version without the rum glaze (made in a loaf pan, more like what you think of as fruitcake than a round cake pan). I felt okay about not doing the rum glaze because I only had a white rum left, and I really needed the Cruzan Black Strap Rum for the caramel sweetness. (Am I sponsored yet?). And kids might eat this, and people who don’t drink alcohol. More Cruzan for the rest of us. Fewer headaches for them. Something for everyone, really.