Chocolate Chocolate Rum Carrot Cake
3/4 cup soft butter
2 cups sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
3 large eggs
2 cups lightly packed grated carrots
1/3 cup rum
2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 unsweetened cocoa powder
2-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 cup semisweet chocolate baking chips
1 cup chopped dates
1/4 cup milk
Rum Glaze (recipe follows)
Into a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat together the butter and the sugar until well blended and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, adding one at a time and incorporating it into the mixture before adding the next egg. Using a spoon, stir the grated carrots into the mixture.
Mix together the flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Stir in the nuts, dates, and the chocolate chips. Combine this mixture and the milk into the butter/sugar/eggs/carrot mixture and stir in the rum.
Spread batter evenly into a well buttered bundt or tube pan.
Bake at 350 degrees until the cake begins to pull back from the sides of the pan and springs back when pressed in the center. This will take about 1 hour. Remove from the oven and set the pan on a rack for 15 to 20 minutes prior to inverting the pan onto a plate. If desired, drizzle the glaze on the cake.
Rum Glaze:
2 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup rum
Mix the powdered sugar and rum together until smooth and use within one hour of mixing. If you have a knitting needle or a skewer handy, you may wish to poke holes into the cake and then drizzle the glaze. This allows the glaze to penetrate the cake quite nicely.