Bacardi Rum Cake Siberian Style
When I was a young man my Mother always gave me and my siblings tips on life like: she doesn’t drink alcohol so we shouldn’t, she would never have s_x before marriage, and so forth. I love my Mother very much and my wife says that my Mother is the very example of how to live and be a lady.
My older sister was a miracle child because 6 months after my parents marriage my Mother gave birth to a healthy 8 lb girl. I was about 9 or 10 when my older sister explained this marvel to me.
Each year my Mother would ask us what cake we would like for our birthdays and my request would always be “Miami Beach Cake” but
My Mother for some reason, loved rum cake and nearly every month baked it and even sometimes it would be in the kitchen on my birthday. What is rum cake made of: 1 cup chopped walnuts; 18 oz of cake mix; 3 oz vanilla pudding; 4 eggs; 1/2 cup water; 1/2 cup cooking oil; 1/2 cup Bacardi dark rum (80 proof) — mix well and bake. The glaze: 1/4 lb butter; 1/4 water; 1 cup sugar; and 1/2 cup Bacardi dark rum (80 proof) whip well and spread on cake after it has cooled.
The kick is, and I get the gold star for this one, I started to notice that each time my mother needed to make another rum cake she also needed another fifth of rum from the state liquor store.
Later in life I understood these tips were because my Mom loved us. The scary thing is, at least for my children, I do the same thing to them.
Okay, now the story, rum cake Siberian Style.
I came to Russia for the first time during the early 1980’s and from what I saw it was the Catholic Church that caused the collapse of the Soviet Union not Ronald Reagan and his “star wars program” (a different story) but he’s still my favorite president even with all his faults.
Regardless, of what the truth may or may not have been, Russia was starving even with having 1/7 of all available farm land on the earth. For city people only those who had dachas (a small house on a small plot of land in the country) ate well.
In the heartland of Russia many people had kept icons, crosses, bibles and other relics given to them by their parents that they had hid over the years and they wanted their God back in the open. These people weren’t starving they grew wheat, potatoes, vegetables, raised cattle but little to nothing was making its way to the rail depots. There is no proof to this but some believe that the church influenced these people and this was the main stumbling block for the Soviet Union.
On Sunday 16 April is Easter in Russia and for some reason the dessert as appears to be blessed by the Orthodox church for Easter is Rum Cake.
How do you make rum from wheat or potatoes? you don’t, you make vodka or moonshine and that’s what they used. It wasn’t until after 1999 that Rum (an imported item) could be afforded by the middle class and rum favoring became available to the masses. And, I’m sure today that the rum cake they sell, even with all the raisins they now add, is a dash of rum flavoring and vodka.
Ron the Siberian
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PS This story was inspired because my wife received a letter from my Mother with her secret cake recipes, one of them was “Rum Cake”.
