Rum cake... or is it a daiquiri cake?

Hellooooo everybody! The Fresh Pioneer is back with a tasty recipe guaranteed to warm up your January!

First, my favorite purchase (sorry, Boris, we're still getting to know each other) of the season. Mr. Coffee Latte maker. AWESOME. I'm in love. I'm going to dedicate my next book to Mr. Latte. (He needs a better name, I agree.) You put in the coffee, water, milk in the carafe, a handful of chocolate chips, and you've got hot mocha. The frother workers perfectly. And QUIETLY, which is bonus as I run up to a big deadline.
                                                              
Yeah, Me and Mr. Latte have been meeting in the kitchen, late late at night.
  My friend Mindy brought over her big book of recipes and a big bottle of... RUM. Ok, we only used about 2 TBS of the rum, so what will she do with the rest? Hmmmm, inquiring minds want to know!  Seriously, she said it would take her years to get through that bottle, which tells me she needs to make MORE RUM CAKE.

 So, recipe:
4 eggs
1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
3 c flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 baking powder
1 tsp rum

 There, see? Milk, sugar, rum. That's pretty much the basis of all good recipes, right?
No? Fine...
It's the start of THIS one.

 Flour, etc.

 Vroom, vroom.
We brought out Boris. I was just telling Mindy a funny story about the time I turned the mixer on a bit too high, just after my daughter had put in the eggs. I reached around, blindly, to the other side of the mixer and flipped the switch all the way to the OFF. Except... it wasn't the right direction.
 Tip of the day, even 3 seconds at super high speed can coat your kitchen (and yourselves) in egg yolk.
As I'm telling her this story, I did the SAME THING.
  She laughed, but I'm pretty sure she was making notes to call the local brain doctor in the AM. Durrrrrrrr me. I'm going to make myself a poster to place over Boris: POWER MIXER, DO NOT EVER CHANGE SPEEDS BY TOUCH INSTEAD OF BY SIGHT

Anyway, mix the ingredients (without managing to splatter yourselves). Add rum. Sip rum. Swig rum from the bottle. (No, no, no. I have a deadline and she was driving, so no sipping or swigging allowed.)

 We made a double batch so, imagine one cake here... Pour into a greased bundt pan. Smooth the top.

Put in the oven at 350F for 90 minutes. (That's what her recipe said but we checked it at 60 minutes and it looked good, so we took it out. I think older recipes have longer cooking times to make up for cooler ovens.)

While the cake is in the pan, start poking holes in it with a knife. All over. Feel the anger and dissatisfaction in your life.

Don't have any? Congratulations. 

Now fake some. Poke, poke, poke, poke.

Now, the sauce:
1 cup sugar
1 tsp rum
1/2 cup water

Bring to a boil, 5-10 min. No tasting to "check". Therein lies madness, my friends.

Spoon the sauce over the cake, letting it soak into the holes.

 Poke, poke, poke, poke.

 Spooning, spooning, spooning.

 (One cake is right side up, and one is upside down because Mindy was headed to a party. See? That's why she's popular. She's invited to a party and she brings RUM CAKE.)

 Do not lick off the glaze. Inhale deeply, but do not lick.

 Mine is sideways. Must be the rum. Everyone's having a good time. PAR-TAY.

 I thought this was a delicious pound cake recipe with the added bonus of rum. As I was eating my (first) slice, I thought of rum and what traditionally goes into rum drinks, and had a brilliant idea.

I bought some of this to make homemade Italian sodas on New Year's Day. And I had a lot left over. Rum and lime is part of what makes a daiquiri, right? So, I added a small amount of sugared lime juice and then fresh blackberries.

MMMMM. I do think this now a daiquiri cake.

    I hope you all enjoyed this recipe and I hope that January is passing quickly for you! Here, it's dark when we get up and dark when we go to bed and grim gray day in between. Wishing you clear skies and bright sunshine!

 Meanwhile, Mr. Latte, Boris, Edna and I will look for more recipes to share. Until next time!

(Here he is, reading for pleasure. Not spinning food all over, like he seems to do when we cook together.)