Cake or elaborate cocktail?

It's been a while since I baked anything, but I've still been bookmarking the interesting sounding recipes that I stumble across. This time around, it's a rum cake - but it caught my eye because the original recipe which I'm basing this cake on had 2/3rds of a bottle of rum in it! Unfortunately though, it's an American recipe, and includes instant vanilla pudding mix as an ingredient. Lots of forums seem to suggest that instant custard powder is an adequate substitute, but using this recipe as a rough guide, I've just tweaked the quantities and added a bit of cornflour instead. I've also scaled the quantities down and knocked down the amount of sugar, as I find that most American recipes are ridiculously oversweetened - and this one looked like it's got far too much sugar to me. This one's quite a step into the unknown, as I've messed around so much with the starting recipe that it's probably not fair to call it the same cake...

Boozy rum cake

Ingredients

For the cake

• 175g Butter
• 520g Granulated sugar*
• 400g Plain flour
• 30g Cornflour**
• 2tsp (9g) Baking powder
• 5g Salt
• 150g Vegetable oil
• 6 Eggs
• 180g Milk
• 180g Spiced rum
• 20g*** Vanilla extract

For the syrup

• 190g Granulated sugar
• 60g Water
• 110g Butter
• 120g Spiced rum
• 1tbsp Vanilla extract

*There's no particularly good reason why I went with granulated sugar this time around - I just didn't expect it would make any real difference to this cake, and it used so much sugar that I figured I'd go with the cheaper option!

**I had actually intended to add 40g of cornflour, but ran out. I can't see it making any real difference though.

***I couldn't be bothered to grab a tablespoon. I don't know how much 20g of vanilla extract is, but I was aiming for about 2tbsp...

Method

1. Cream the butter and sugar together in a stand mixer until fluffy.
2. Add the dry ingredients (flour, cornflour, baking powder, salt) and mix until homogenous and breadcrumb-like.
3. Drizzle the oil in gradually.
4. Beat the eggs and mix with the milk. Gradually add to the mixer.
5. Gradually add the rum and vanilla.
6. Pour into greased and floured cake pans.
7. Bake at 180C for 20 minutes, then turn down to 160C for a further 25 minutes.
8. Heat the sugar and water in pan, stirring to dissolve the sugar.
9. Stir in the butter and remove from the heat.
10. Stir in the rum and vanilla.
11. Remove the cakes from the oven and turn out from the pans while still hot.
12. Brush the syrup liberally over the cakes and allow to cool.

Ready for the oven! I only intended to use the super-cute bee silicone cake tin on the right - clearly, I didn't scale the quantities down nearly enough. I think 2/3rds of the quantities I actually used would have been just about perfect 

And here they are out of the oven. I had thought this might be the case before I put them in to bake, but I think it's pretty clear that I used too much baking powder

Almost got it out of the tin intact! Maybe I can claim that this was intentional because it wouldn't fit on the plate otherwise, and after all, you always need a small mini cake to test, right?

Holy heck that syrup is boozy. This is definitely a cake that you mustn't eat before you drive...

Even having got the quantities so badly wrong, there is faaar too much syrup for the quantity of cake. And the ridiculous thing is, I'm pretty sure that I downscaled the syrup:cake ratio already. I did end up using all of it, but that's more because of my stubbornness - I'm guessing the cakes are verging on completely saturated.

Edit: I've completely changed my mind, having now finished eating it. There's absolutely not excessive amounts of syrup - perhaps it could even have done with a bit more. I'd forgotten that rum cakes are supposed to be soaked in the syrup - it's not a glaze. This cake was great though - and it got significantly better after aging for a couple of days. Definitely a special occasion cake, given the amount of rum and butter in it, but this was a definite winner!