If you came of age in the ’70s, you might remember seeing this cake in magazine ads or maybe just at every holiday party you ever attended. If you were very young, you might remember it as the cake you were never really allowed to eat. (Thanks, rum.) In any case, it was a genius marketing move by Bacardi. With a recipe that uses a very generous amount of their dark rum, and also some classic American store-bought shortcuts (yellow cake mix and vanilla pudding, I’m looking at you), they created a cake with somewhat of a cult following. It’s nostalgic, sure, but thanks to its easy preparation and incredible flavor, it’s still popular today.

What Ingredients Do You Need for Bacardi Rum Cake?

For a recipe with a cake AND a glaze, not a lot. You’ll need:

• A box of yellow cake mix.
• A box of vanilla pudding.
• Bacardi rum. (The dark variety.)
• Eggs, oil, water, some sugar.
• Some pecans or walnuts.
• A stick of butter.

How Do You Make Bacardi Rum Cake?

For a cake this delicious, it’s almost too easy to make. The classic preparation here is in a bundt pan, and you’ll want to grease and flour that well so your cake unmolds easily after baking.

Once that pan is prepared, sprinkle the chopped nuts into the bottom and then mix up the batter. You don’t need a mixer, just whisk together the cake mix, vanilla pudding, eggs, water, oil, and some rum and pour it over the nuts.

It will take about an hour in the oven to bake completely, you’ll know it’s done when a toothpick comes out clean. Then, take it out to cool.

Once it’s mostly cool, you can make the glaze, which you do by melting a stick of butter in a saucepan and stirring in some sugar and water. You want to let it boil for five minutes, stirring it occasionally, to create a glaze that will harden up a bit. Off the heat, stir in a half cup of rum. (No, it doesn’t get cooked out. That’s why I never got to eat this as a kid.)

Arrange your cake on a serving plate and poke it all over with something like a skewer or a toothpick so that the glaze has an easier time making its way inside. And then you glaze. This part takes a minute.

Drizzle the glaze sloooooowly over the cake or use a brush to apply it. Let it absorb as you go before adding more glaze and keep going until all that glaze is used up. That means you need to work pretty slowly here to give the cake time to fully absorb all that rum glaze. But I promise you it’s well worth it.

This cake is buttery, so incredibly moist, and that delicious rich glaze is one you’ll find yourself sopping up off the serving plate. Happy baking!