Until my adulthood, I always just thought of rum as something fictional pirates sang about in cartoons.
Looking into it now, I know how nuanced the flavor profiles can be for the spirit, which is distilled from sugar cane syrup or juice or from molasses, which is what is leftover when you process sugar cane.
Rum’s flavor profile is created by fermentation length, additions or even the type of barrel it’s aged in.
According to the website “Rob’s Rum Guide,” for dark rums, they “gain most of their rich color and often their full-bodied flavor from added caramel or molasses.”
I tell you all of this to say that this week’s recipe features just a little dark rum, but if you’re normally not into the taste of alcohol, the use of it here is merely adding some dark, molasses flavors that really compliment the banana in this cake. In other words, don’t be nervous, and you can do the whole cake with just an airplane bottle of dark rum.
This recipe, by Wendy Klik, comes from the blog “A Day in the Life on the Farm.” You can find the original post at https://adayinthelifeonthefarm.blogspot.com/2024/03/banana-rum-cake-cakeslicebakers.html?m=1. I added extra nutmeg, decided to opt for overripe mashed bananas for the mix-in, and skipped the glaze in my version.
Banana Rum Cake
Ingredients
Rum Bananas Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 3 overripe bananas peeled and mashed
- 1/4 cup brown sugar
- 2 tablespoons dark rum
Cake Ingredients
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1 cup sugar
- 8 tablespoons butter room temperature
- 2 teaspoons nutmeg
- 3 eggs
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 2 overripe bananas peeled and mashed
- 1 tablespoon vanilla paste or extract
- 3 cups flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup buttermilk or milk with a touch of vinegar
Instructions
Rum Bananas Directions
- Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Stir in the bananas and brown sugar, and cook for about one minute or until everything is heated through and just starting to bubble. Stir in the rum and cook for one more minute.
- Remove the saucepan from the heat and let it come up to room temperature.
Cake Directions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and prepare a bundt pan by spraying the inside with cooking spray.
- In a large mixing bowl, beat the sugars, butter and nutmeg for several minutes until the mixture is light yellow and fluffy.
- Beat in the eggs, one at a time.
- With the mixer on low, drizzle in the oil until it is well combined, and then stir in the mashed bananas and vanilla.
- Alternating between wet and dry, and beating between each addition, add the rest of the cake ingredients.
- Stir in the rum bananas, along with any juices.
- Spread the cake batter evenly into the bundt pan and bake for about one hour or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
- Let the cake cool for at least 10 minutes before turning it upside down onto a wire rack and removing the cake from the pan. Let it cool completely, and then store in an airtight container.
This had deep brown sugar, molasses and ripe banana notes to it that made it extra delicious. If you wanted the rum to have more prominence, I’d go to the original creator’s website and make the rum glaze for this, but honestly, it was so moist that it didn’t need it.
You could also easily mix in some chopped walnuts, if you wanted some nuttiness in this, too.
And now we know rum is for more than just pirates, although, if you try this cake, you might figure out what they were singing about.
This piece first appeared in print Oct. 8, 2026.
Spice Up Your Life is a weekly newspaper column written by Lindsey Young in south central Kansas. If you are interested in sponsoring this column, please contact us through the “Contact Lindsey” link at the top of the page.
