Make This Rum-Runner’s Bundt Cake for Your Next BBQ

This angel food rum cake with a crazy delicious almond-rum glaze is sure to woo your 4th of July guests. However, the cake is just as rich with history as it is with brown sugar and love.

What if I told you that rum was just as patriotic as apple pie or toupee-bearing presidential candidates? Well, it sure holds true value to the timeline of American history. On the 17th century sugarcane plantations of the Caribbean, slaves discovered that molasses, or the sticky by-product of sugar production, could be used to produce a crude alcohol.

Rum quickly became a huge link of barter on the Atlantic for many years to come. The colonies were quickly wild about the alcohol and distilleries soon boomed production in Boston and Staten Island. According to rumbarrel.com, “the profitability of rum helped spawn the slave trade. When 1764’s Sugar Act disrupted that trade, some of the seeds for the American Revolution may have been planted,” and fast-forwarding 250 years later, rum would be a staple of prohibition, with bootleggers nick-named “Rum Runners.”

This independence day, I strongly urge you to have acknowledgement of the entire scope of American history: from slavery to the economic incline thereof, from revolutions to protect a philosophical freedom to the culture of today spawned from the prohibition era of the ’20s and ’30s. America was built by thinkers, creators, slaves and scholars – and bakers, too.

Rum-Runner's Bundt Cake

• Prep Time:30 minutes
• Cook Time:25-30 minutes
• Total Time:1-1.5 hours
• Servings:5-7
• Medium

Ingredients

• 1 box Betty Crocker Angel Food Cake
• 1 tablespoon rum extract
• 2 tablespoon butter
• 1/2 cup blanched sliced almonds
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup orange juice (no pulp)
• 1/2 cup brewed coffee
• 1 teaspoon rum extract

• Step 1

  Set oven temperature accordingly.

• Step 2

  Follow instructions on angel food cake box. Fold 1 tablespoon of rum extract into the mix. Place in oven.

• Step 3

  After your cake has cooled, begin the glaze. Melt 2 tablespoons of butter on medium-low heat.

  

• Step 4

  Pour in 1 cup of the sliced almonds.

  

• Step 5

  Whisk in 1 cup brown sugar.

  

• Step 6

  Whisk in 1/2 cup of orange juice. Keep the glaze in constant motion to prevent burning.

  

• Step 7

  Whisk in 1/2 cup of brewed coffee.

  

• Step 8

  Add 1 teaspoon of rum extract.

  

• Step 9

  Pour almond glaze over cooled angel food cake.