Christmas Countdown Day 5: 5 Golden Rings

To be honest, I was quite excited for 5 golden rings. And for good reason too - think about how much emphasis is placed on this gift in the song?? All week, I had ambitiously worked on planning 5 golden ring-inspired recipes to produce for day 5 of my Christmas countdown, but when I looked at how much food I have been cooking and eating for the past few days (as well as thought about how much I will have to cook and eat for the next few days), I decided to just stick with one recipe.

And for my one recipe, I went with something that I knew would be delicious - rum cake (in the shape of rings, of course).

This recipe was actually taken from Allrecipes: Golden Rum Cake Recipe (I know, I said I wouldn't use a recipe...), but in all fairness, this was a recipe I had used long, long ago. I made some minor tweaks, but still kept the spirit of the original recipe intact.

My first major change was that I did not make a giant Bundt cake and instead poured the batter into a donut pan to produce what I had hoped would be beautiful golden rings. But after baking, I quickly remembered that whenever I make rum cake, the cakes have a nasty habit of sinking, so I knew I would not emerge with beautiful golden rings. But cake is cake, regardless of how it looks, so I went forward with it!

Just to note a few of the tweaks I made to the recipe (in case you're curious and want to try my version out):

• Left out the walnuts (because I don't like them)
• Used 1/2 cup of milk instead of 1/2 cup of water
• Replaced 1/2 cup of vegetable oil with 1/2 cup of melted (and cooled) butter
• Used Malibu Coconut Rum instead of dark rum (to get that delicious coconut-y flavor!)

Also, when I poured the rum into the glaze (after removing it from heat and pouring into a separate bowl), I noticed the glaze instantly began to congeal and form these unsightly clumps. So I simply poured the whole mixture back into a pan and reheated on the stove until it was one uniform mixture again. And I even reaped the benefit of slightly burning off some of the alcohol flavor (great for those who are not partial to alcohol!).

Clearly the rings were not beautiful, especially since they did not separate from the pan (oops), but I figured I had to at least show them so that I could check "5 golden rings" off of my list. On a more positive note, the cupcakes turned out better...