...aka Andrea & Brian's wedding cakes, part one. (Yes, two kinds of cake. They're food people, and dear to me, afterall!) Brian asked specially for rum cake - like a rum baba. Having never made a rum cake, I turned to my favorite baker-of-ethanol-laced cakes for advice. Eric kindly gave me his family's old recipe for rum cakes - his favorite growing up, too! They were a big hit - but be careful. If you eat a few with your morning coffee, the sugarcrash aftermath is wicked.

Cake
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cups butter
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 cup buttermilk (or soured milk)
2 tsp vanilla

Butter-Rum Sauce
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup butter
3 T dark, good quality, rum

Combine milk and vanilla. Sift dry ingredients together. Cream butter and sugar; blend in eggs one at a time, beat well. Alternate adding dry ingredients and milk/vanilla mixture with creamed butter/sugar/eggs, beginning and ending with dry, eg. add 1/3 dry, 1/2 liquid, 1/3 dry, etc.

Grease bottom of 10 inch tube or bundt pan, or you can use a mini bundt pan Bake at 325 for 55-65 minutes if using large pan, or 20-30 minutes if using mini bundt pan.

Combine sugar, butter & water over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil. Remove from heat. Stir in rum. (Mko note: original calls for 2 Tbsp of rum - I upped this to 3 or 4. Weddings are for excess, no?)

While cake is still warm, prick throughout with bamboo skewer and drench with hot sauce. Remove from pan after cake has cooled.

Notes from Eric: The butter sauce can make the cake really stick to the pan, but if you use the Pam baking spray with flour to grease the pan it almost always come straight out. If you need to make a lot you can bake two mini bundt pans at the same time. We never seem to have buttermilk, but regular milk soured with vinegar or lemon works fine. Poke LOTS and LOTS of holes in the cake for the tastiest results.

Notes from meriko: I used 2 mini-bundt pans with quarter-cup capacity per cake. The recipe for cake fills 24 slots, and leaves enough leftover for 3-4 cupcakes to be baked off right after the cakes. Only fill the cups 2/3 full if you want flat bottoms so your cakes will stack. I didn't use Pam - don't have it around. Instead I used the old-fashioned butter & flour method. Melted butter & a pastry brush are the easiest way to butter the nooks of the crazy bundt pans. To get an easy release after the cakes have cooled, I inverted the pans, hit the bottom of a cake with a kitchen torch for a few seconds, and wiggled the cake until it dropped into my hand. (All hail the croquembouche trick!)