Cookbook Club: Montego Bay Rum Cake
To catch up on this month’s Cookbook Club, read about The Rise cookbook here!
The importance of expanding our food experiences:
Something I’ve taken away from The Rise that I don’t consider often enough is how easily we accept certain foods over others. As a 30 something year old white woman who passionately loves food, I have a lot of feelings about being kept from some of the most influential foods, ingredients, and recipes on our planet. I’m not an expert on talking about any of this, but I am an expert in food and how it connects us through years, across borders and over oceans.
Samuelsson says it best in this excerpt from the Legacy chapter,
“If the United States can embrace kimchi and nigiri and sushi, we can learn to eat fufu. Jollof rice deserves to be in the same conversation as paella or jambalaya. Pho has become an important part of the food story here, and fish pepper soup, a staple of Nigeria and other countries, ought to be just as present. Why do we accept one food but treat another as too different to try? We ought to unpack that. This book is one step in that direction.”
This rum cake brings a bit of Jamaica to what would otherwise be just a plain (albeit delicious) vanilla cake. VANILLA CAKE. Do we see the beautiful irony here? It becomes something new and different. When we let other places and cultures in through food, our lives become more flavorful…more beautiful…more meaningful. So this post is about cake, but it is also about something deeper. I don’t have all the answers about why we accept one food/culture over another. But I do deeply believe it is something we should all take time to, as Samuelsson says, unpack.
Montego Bay Rum Cake
This Montego Bay Rum Cake is amazing. The batter is light and airy, perfect for soaking up rum, and it is topped with a dreamy, pillowy layer of brown sugar sweetened whipped cream. Honestly, making this cake was pure joy from start to finish. But I don’t recommend eating it midday because…well…the rum. It’s more of an after dinner or Sunday brunch kind of situation.
Can I omit the rum?
Sure! But if you do, I would recommend making a kind of soaking syrup because the cake may be a bit dry without that additional liquid. In face, there is a gorgeous recipe for a ginger and hibiscus flower granita in the book, I would recommend making the syrup for that recipe and using that in place of the rum to pour over the cake!
Chapters of The Rise Cookbook
Back to the book…
One of the things I love most about The Rise is how it is organized. It is divided into 5 chapters and they are:
Next: Where Black food is headed: Chefs and recipes on the cutting edge, and who’s got next.
Remix: Black cooking integrates many cultures and adapts to different ingredients, methods, and geographies.
Migration: The influence of the American South-the Great Migration and beyond.
Legacy: Old and new journeys from Africa to the Americas and stories of Black figures in food reclaiming their history.
Origin: A pantry of ingredients, techniques, and recipes related to the African diaspora.
Each of these sections in The Rise focus so beautifully on how Black food used to be, what it is now, and where it is going. But you also get an entire chapter, Origin, that focuses on the basic pantry staples that form the foundation for many of the recipes in the book.
This recipes for Montego Bay Rum Cake is from the chapter entitled Legacy. As we learn about Black cooking through this cookbook, we must take the time to consider why we don’t already know more about African cuisine. I hope this month’s cookbook series has helped you do just that.
If you want to make this beautiful cake, pick up a copy of the book at your local bookstore or library. I’d love to see your photos of anything you make or read from The Rise, so please tag me @setthetable on Instagram or send me an email!
You can go here to find a copy of The Rise.
Be well. Eat well. Learn and grow.
