Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Look I’m Sandra Lee

Posted by Erin Wilburn / 1 comment » / alcohol, cake, dessert

Ok, I have to admit.  Occasionally if I’m channel surfing, and there’s not much on television worth watching, and I see Semi-Homemade with Sandra Lee, I might tune in.  For those who don’t know, her show is all about taking shortcuts & using prepackaged products. This lady amazes me, for many reasons.  She’s totally not my style, but it’s like watching a train wreck, you can’t NOT look.
She is WAAAAAY too skinny to be eating any of the food she makes.

But I love that she’s ALWAYS mixing up a cocktail!  Cuz we know I like a good drink.

I needed to make a cake for a friend’s birthday, but I didn’t have enough money to go buy a bunch of ingredients.  I happened to have a box of yellow cake mix in my house.  So I knew I should make a cake using a box.  But I wanted to do something extra to jazz it up, with the requirement being it had to be with ingredients I already had in the house.

I did various internet searches to no avail.  I finally made my way over to the Food Network website.  I did a search for cake mix or something like that, as I was browsing I remembered Sandra Lee, so I narrowed my search to show recipes only from her.  Somehow I found this recipe for a Caramel Rum Cake. Ok, so she really called it a Rum Caramel Cake, but Caramel Rum Cake sounded better. And I’m ALLLL about adding alcohol to desserts! I’ve never made a rum cake, so I thought this should be fun!

I assembled the ingredients.

Then I doubled checked to make sure this was ALL I needed.  3 Eggs, some oil, some water & some rum.  ARE YOU FOR REAL?  YUP!  That’s all you need.

It literally took me five minutes to make this cake.  And that’s including cutting the wax paper that lined the bottom of the cake pans (I used 2 not 3 by the way, as mine are 9 inch pans).

*Update* This is one of my very first posts, and it’s not my finest work.  The cake is good, and easy; but the frosting isn’t easy, nor good.  So I’m omitting that.  If you’re looking for a shortcut cake, this is a great choice, but go ahead and just do a shortcut frosting.  Buy it in a can.

Print

Caramel Rum Cake

from FoodNetwork

Ingredients:

1 (18.25 oz) box yellow cake mix
1/4 cup dark rum
1 cup water
3 eggs
1/3 cup vegetable oil

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cut wax paper into circles to line bottom of pans (optional). Spray round cake pans with nonstick butter-flavored baking spray; set aside.

In a large bowl, beat cake mix, rum, water, eggs, and oil on low speed with an electric mixer for 30 seconds. Scrape down sides of bowl and beat for 2 more minutes on medium speed.

Divide batter evenly between prepared cake pans. Bake in preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes, or until tester comes away clean. Cool completely before icing.

Here’s an example of when I made them as cupcakes for a VO session I “catered” at work.  They were RAVED over, and I’ve promised to make them for an audio editor’s birthday next year!