We didn’t really do anything fancy for dessert yesterday - along with some brown sugar squash pie that I made last month (and had frozen), we had some rum cake we made the other day. Super simple recipe, and it improves with age. 
This is another one of those recipes that have been around forever, so I’m not sure of the original source - this is one I put in my recipe box about a decade ago.
Bacardi Rum Cake
1 cup pecan or walnuts, chopped
1 pk yellow cake mix* (18 ½ oz)
1 pk Jell-O Vanilla Instant* - Pudding and Pie Filling - (3 1/4 oz)
4 Eggs
½ cup cold water
½ cup cooking oil
½ cup Bacardi dark rum (80 proof)
Glaze:
1/4 lb Butter
1/4 c Water
1/2 c Bacardi dark rum (80 proof)
1 cup sugar
Glaze: Melt butter in saucepan. Stir in water and sugar. Boil 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Stir in rum.
Preheat oven to 325º. Grease and flour 10″ tube or 12-cup Bundt pan. Sprinkle nuts over bottom of pan. Mix all cake ingredients together. Pour batter over nuts.
Bake 1 hour. Cool. Invert on serving plate. Prick top. Spoon and brush glaze evenly over top and sides. Allow cake to absorb glaze. Repeat until glaze is used up.
*Note: If using yellow cake mix with pudding already in the mix; omit instant pudding, use 3 eggs instead of 4; 1/3 cup oil instead of ½.
November 23rd, 2007 at 5:02 pm
This cake kinda reminds me of a Tres Leches cake my mom used to bake. She’d let the rum, along with the milks, get absorbed into the cake overnight. It was really good. That rum-cake combination is one of the best.
Cheers!
November 28th, 2007 at 12:19 pm
Do you have any suggestions for what I should do if I want to make this cake w/out the alcohol?
November 30th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
Sophia: I’ve been making this cake for years and it is excellent… however, I substitute lemon juice and water (equal amounts) and find the results equally good. The same goes for the glaze… It’s wonderful and lemony!!
December 17th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
The first time I made this cake was right about the time I was able to buy alcohol legally.
It’s still an awesome recipe!
Thanks for posting it!
June 17th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
I have been without this recipie since we moved about 6 years now. It is always the favorite. Thanks for having it for us. Your recipie turned out just great. I use to make this from scratch, it was the way we learned to do it in school. This is much easier and turned out soooo good!
Thanks
August 19th, 2008 at 11:44 am
[...] stole my picture of the rum cake I made last year, from this post. And the funny thing? After I made a comment about the pic on Haalo’s entry, my pic [...]