Jamacian rum cakes – some pack a punch!

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Happy April fools day!!  I almost forgot about these until I stumbled upon the pictures!  After our cruise trip to the Caribbean’s last year to St Thomas, St Lucia, Guadeloupe, Antigua, St Croix and Puerto Rico… we brought some of these back so that we could have a taste of the warm smooth rum back at home… in a cake!

We bought a bunch of different flavored Tortuga cakes to compare with a rum cake we picked up at a liquor store at St Lucia… the Toruga cakes, while having various flavors like chocolate, vanilla, coconut, pineapple and original… had rum as an ingredient close to the end of the line… and boasted less than ½ a percent of alcohol.

The Bounty rum cake (made in Trinadad with St Lucia rum), has rum as the first ingredient, followed by brandy.. and boasts 40% alcohol.. as much as a shot of rum.  Does this cake even get baked? Or maybe only the person eating it will… lol!

The original Tortuga cake has walnuts added to a plain vanilla medium dense cake base.  Couldn’t taste the rum if you tried, and since samples of this cake was fed nilly willy to little kids while we were on the cruise, we weren’t too surprised to not taste any rum in this rum cake. 

Flavors tend to be subtle, except for the coconut version of the cake which had a good bit of coconuty sweetness to it.

Now, the Bounty rum cake.. which resembled a fruitcake rather than a fluffy cake cake.  It looks kind of funny as it was vacuum packed and all the plastic vacuum packaging left designs all over the thick cake that resembled more of a misshapen hockey puck than anything edible (honoring its fruitcake heritage).

Thick and incredibly dense, this lightly sweetened cake had a characteristic dried fruit paste taste to it, was a bit on the gummy side, but you could actually taste traces of the sweet rum and brandy added to this cake… though you’d have to eat a lot of this energy bar like cake to get in a decent amount of alcohol lol!  If I be a pirate, this be a cake I would want to go with me grog!! Arrrgh! ;D