November is always a big birthday month.  Let’s bake a birthday cake, I usually go for my favorite chocolate. I wanted to make a chocolate rum cake this year. My friend dug up an old recipe she saved from the newspaper, it was titled Janice’s whiskey cake from the food section of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, March 27th 1996.

It looked like a classic, the recipe called for white cake mix and whiskey, I substituted chocolate cake mix and dark rum. It worked great, the instant pudding made it nice and moist.  But still not enough chocolate for me, any excuse to top it with some chocolate ganache.  I also made the ganache with a tablespoon of the dark rum. After melting the cream and chocolate I placed it in the refrigerator over night and then whipped it up the next day and spread it on top of the cake as frosting. The birthday guests really enjoyed this cake, it will make a repeat appearance.