This luxurious boozy dessert deserves its claim to fame! Awarded “Best Tasting” by acclaimed food critic Jonathan Gold in 2014, my favorite Golden Butter Rum Cake recipe features a decadent yellow cake soaked in a slightly sweet, rum-infused syrup that will leave you (and your guests) clamoring for second servings.
I’ve got a rummy little treat for you today! I first made this Golden Butter Rum Cake in 2014 for UCLA’s annual Edible Book Festival, a literary celebration where bookworms like me get to bake their nerdiness into all sorts of crazy edible concoctions…and where I also had the amazing fortune to meet renowned LA Times food critic Jonathan Gold! I think my hand shook so much while I cut his slice of cake that it looked like something that’d been trampled by an overzealous zebra on parade.
BUT GUESS WHOSE UGLY ZEBRA-TRAMPLED GOLDEN BUTTER RUM CAKE WON FIRST PLACE EH?
As someone who regularly makes #PinterestFails like it’s her god-sworn duty, I am always, always, ALWAYS a proponent of great-tasting ugly desserts. If you can’t judge a book by its cover, then you most definitely can’t judge food by how much (or little) it resembles the plastic cake displays at discount French pastry shops. Apparently Jonathan Gold agreed, too, because spoiler alert: this cake ended up winning both Best Tasting and Best Student Entry categories, with a Jonathan Gold stamp of approval included!
And if that isn’t enough to convince you to try this cake stat, then you can just walk away and leave me & my butter rum cake be, thank you very much.
Even though I’ve tried many lovely cakes since then, this recipe is still one of our all-time favorites and (like a great bottle of booze) ages perfectly in our recipe collection, so I’m sharing it exactly as I did back in 2014–you’ll find the full award-winning recipe below. And a big warm thanks to Jonathan Gold–it’s been six years and we miss you dearly, but this golden butter rum cake is still for you, sir.
This luxurious boozy dessert deserves its claim to fame! Awarded "Best Tasting" by acclaimed food critic Jonathan Gold, my favorite Golden Butter Rum Cake recipe features a decadent yellow cake soaked in a slightly sweet, rum-infused syrup that will leave you (and your guests) clamoring for second servings. This is the same recipe that I shared with him in 2014, and it only gets better with time.
Butter Rum Cake
Ingredients
For the yellow cake:
For the syrup:
Instructions
For the cake:
For the rum/Kahlua sauce:
The actual Direct Message I received from Jonathan Gold the day after the Edible Book Festival:
Cake? Rum? Yes! 🙂 This is a wonderful recipe — my kind of stuff. Thanks.
Thanks, John! Also, so nice to see you again–hope you’ve been staying well!!