Gettin' Warm. . .Bakin' a Rum Cake

It's snowing again. . . another arctic freeze sliding across the USA has got me looking for any way at all to keep warm.

Oh, sure. . .there's turning up the furnace, putting another log on the fire, wearing woolie socks, scarf, and mittens.  Or maybe even wrapping up in one of those Snuggie things.  Personally, I'd much rather warm up mixing a cake, then stand by the oven soaking up the heat from baking the cake. . .and when a cakes as tasty as this (with Rum, to boot) - baby, all it takes is one piece and I'm H-O-T!

Rowdy Rum Cake

1/2 cup chopped pecans

1 box yellow cake mix

1 sm. box instant vanilla pudding

1/2 cup rum

1/2 cup butter, melted

4 eggs

Preheat over to 350 and sprinkle nuts in bottom of greased tube pan.

Combine rest of ingredients

in large mixing bowl until smooth.

Pour into prepared pan

and bake 45 - 50 minutes until toothpick poked in cake comes out clean.

While cake is baking - let's make the

Tasty Rum Glaze

1 cup sugar

1 stick butter

1/4 cup rum

Melt butter in small saucepan over medium heat.  Remove from heat, add sugar and rum and stir until sugar is dissolved.

Drizzle glaze over cake while still warm and in the pan.  Mine really puffed up out of the pan (the pan that I typicall used for this recipe was damaged in a 'tragic collapsing shelf' accident) because it wasn't really big enough.,

so we cut the cake level (so it will sit on the cake plate when removed from pan) and then poured the glaze over the cake.  Of course. . . we ate all the 'scraps.'

Let cake cool for 30 minutes - and yes!  The cake will shrink.  That's normal - so relax.  It's okay.  I really freaked out the first time I made it because it said *nothing* on the recipe about shrinkage. . . It also didn't tell me to let it cool in the pan 30 minutes. . . . both hints pretty critical for a stress-free Rum Cake baking session.

Invert cake onto plate

and either serve immediately while still warm, or cover and wait until tomorrow - or anytime in between.  Actually, I dare you to wait until tomorrow. . . won't happen;-)  I couldn't even get a nice picture of it sliced on someone's plate. . . I would cut a slice, put it on a plate and it would disappear.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it. . . 'cause I'm H-O-T like that!

Have a Warm Rummy kind of day ~

Robin Z