Monday, December 10, 2012

Holiday baking

This past Saturday was the Annual Liquid Lunch/Dirty Santa party that we (the group of wimmins I hang out with) have every year to celebrate the season.  We generally meet at our favorite watering hole (Heroes on Hwy 21) and eat, drink, act merry, and try to scam the best gift out of the gift swap.  Lots of the ladies bring little goodie bags or treats for everyone as well.  This year, the lovely Lisa McCord brought a rum cake.  It was ABSO-FREAKING-LUTELY the most awesome rum cake I have ever had.  As we were completely WRECKING that cake, we repeatedly asked Lisa to make sure to send us the recipe for it.  She obliged us, which in turn, enables me to share with you:


1 Duncan Hines Butter Recipe Cake Mix

1 box of instant vanilla pudding mix

½ cup of veg. Oil

½ cup of water

½ cup of rum (I used dark and actually did less water and more rum)

4 large eggs

¼ cup of chopped pecans



Mix first 5 ingredients and then add eggs 1 at a time until blended.


Spray bunt pan with baking spray and sprinkle the pecans in the bottom, pour cake mix in pan and bake at 350 deg for about 45 minutes.



Glaze:
  
1 stick of butter

1 cup of sugar

¼ cup of water

¼ cup of rum (again, I used dark and added more rum)



Cook above ingredients to a boil and pour over cake as soon as it comes out of the oven.  Let the glaze soak into the cake and then turn cake out on to plate and enjoy!!



Someone made the comment: I bet it would be even more awesome if you replaced ALL the water with rum…I quickly hit the REPLY TO ALL with this dire warning:

No! For the love of God, NO!!! Don’t you remember the peanut butter rum cookie debacle of 2009?
And felt compelled to share the following story with my friends (The following is from an old email that went out to a few of my friends and co-workers):

Me: Gah! What is that SMELL????

Jeff: Okay, there’s something I need to tell you…



These types of discussions never end well.



I swear to God…my life is a sitcom. Last night, I took a good ol' Ambien and went to bed around midnight (I haven't slept well this whole week with everything going on.)
Jeff was still up watching TV, having a rum & coke. Something on the TV makes him decide that what he really needs (RIGHT NOW!!!) is some peanut butter cookies. Sadly, we do not have any in the pantry…so he looks up a recipe on the internet for something simple...finds one that's basically Bisquick, peanut butter, brown sugar and water. "Water?" he thinks. "Water sucks. You know what's better than water....rum." So he makes a batch of peanut butter cookie dough substituting rum for water. He said that everything was fine until he cracked the oven door to look at them. They went "whoosh" & caught fire. It's a wonder he didn't burn the house down. We have a new rule...no more drunk baking without supervision after midnight. I don't think I'm being unreasonable here. Luckily, he is bald, so at least his HEAD didn’t catch on fire along with the cookies (which incidentally did not look much like cookies…more like biscuits…burnt biscuits…that reeked of rum).

Anyway, without further ado…BEHOLD! Jeff’s peanut butter-rum cookies!!! At least he plated them nicely: