Chocolate Cherry Rum Cake

As I continue playing with various rum cake recipes, I find variation after variation each time I look at ingredients in my pantry. I like to keep an eclectic mix of items around to foster my creativity.

The chocolate cherry mix is nothing new, but the rum soak ads a nice kick each time one comes across a chewy cherry in the cake.

The recipe:

 

Cake:

1 box chocolate cake mix

1 box (4 serving) vanilla instant pudding

½ cup water

½ cup rum

½ cup oil (I use olive)

4 eggs

1 cup dried tart cherries soaked in rum

 

Glaze

¼ cup butter

½ cup sugar

¼ cup water

¼ cup rum

1 tsp almond extract

1 tsp chocolate extract

 

Preheat oven to 325°.  Pour the rum off the soaked cherries, reserve to use in the cake and in the glaze (if there is enough). In a large bowl, combine cake mix, pudding mix, water, oil, eggs, rum, and soaked cherries. Beat until combined. Grease and flour a bundt pan. Spread nuts around the bottom then pour in the batter. Bake for 50-60 minutes.

 

When the cake comes out of the oven, leave in pan. Boil butter, sugar, water, and allspice glaze ingredients for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and stir in rum, almond extract, and chocolate extract.

 

With the cake still in the pan, poke holes in the cake – I use a chopstick. Pour hot glaze over the cake. Allow the glaze to soak into the cake before turning it out onto a plate (about 5 minutes).