A Yummy Taste of the Islands, Tortuga Rum Cake – Review

A while back, I receive an invite to try some rum cake from Tortuga. I was so very excited to have some dessert in the house to review… finally, I’d get a chance to start having some food type reviews to show to the probable sponsors asking for some from me. Sadly up until this point it seemed that only Joan received these reviews for food, snacks and desserts…at last my time had come after almost a year and a half of blogging. However after this review, I may have spoiled any hopes of doing dessert or any food reviews in the future, you be the judge…

I received my rum cake in a decent sized box, excitement continued as I felt the weight of this in my hands. When  I opened the package up, to my dismay the contents were mostly Media Press Release related items in a nice big folder that contained pages and pages of PR/Media papers and  a disc full of PDF’s Documents and Pictures and I mean 20 minutes to download from disc, (my mistake).

Then my attention snapped from all this info to the 2 teeny tiny boxes that were delivered with all this info. I literally felt my bubble of excitement burst. I obviously expected too much, as a result of my invite and I must admit that I felt a bit insulted, that for a small amount of product to review they obviously expected so much. What was I to do? We have informed the companies that want to have us review their products that we don’t except samples for our reviews. I’ve had bigger samples at cake tastings for weddings.

The label on these small cakes state they are 4 oz each and the cakes literally were about the size of the palm of my hand.  I was sure glad that is was just me and my husband here, there would be no way I could even get a taste of each had we not received 2 to try, as it is the cakes were so small that I barely got enough to give a decent review, and again it’s against our policies to accept samples and we plan to stick with it from now onward… I just didn’t want to disappoint Joan, who so kindly asked that I got to try this dessert. Joan knows that I’ve been asked repeatedly to show samples of my work on certain subjects that up until this point seemed to all go to her, not for my lack of trying either. *sigh*

Well, this review will probably not ever be a review that I will show to companies trying to consider my work on this topic. But I decided that the review should be done, non-the-less. If just to show that the 2 bites of each cake I had was of good quality… difficult to review, though it may be, I would take on the task and perhaps show that I do have a little bit of skill in this area.So here we go!

The Cakes:

The were sealed inside the container with plastic that we needed to cut open.

Upon opening the Original Rum Cake you couldn’t help but notice the smell of the Rum and notice the bottom was nice and soggy, as you’d expect from any Rum Cake as the majority of the weight of it is the Rum poured over the cake. The Banana Rum Cake, didn’t seem to have any Rum odor to it, nor was there any sogginess from the Rum to the bottom of the cake.

Both cakes we sampled had a nicely browned exterior, were evenly browned, smooth and had a mini bundt cake look to them.

The texture had a nice velvety feel to the tongue, as well as a nice moist Crumb.

The Grain of the cake had nice fine cells, with no tunneling… slicing with our fork, the cake was not crumbly at all and stayed intact.

I have to say these manufactured cakes have a beautiful look and would be great with fruit, a glaze or just whipped cream or a complementary ice cream, served on top or along side.The cake, especially the Original Rum Cake, will hold their own with the above additions.

We loved the Original Rum Cake, it was nice and moist with rum flavor that was good and strong. Almost as good as my Mothers “Boozie Fruit Cake” that we get a good taste of about every other Christmas or so.The other Cake, the Banana Rum Cake seems to have been made for those who like to have just the taste of a good sweet cake with a light smoothness and slight taste of Banana to it. For me, I couldn’t taste the rum in that banana rum cake, and it was not nearly as moist as the Original Rum Cake, but it was smooth and light.

I read up on this company and I see that they were voted as “The Best Cruise Souvenir” by Porthole Cruise Magazine for the eighth consecutive year, this year. And I can see why, although I personally wouldn’t go for this tiny mini cake as a souvenir as it would be eaten in i one sitting and that is just too fast to really enjoy a “souvenir”. Perhaps one could say that the  4 oz Cakes be a good diet portion controlled serving for those watching their weight but wanting a bit of a cheat on their diet. For me the 4 oz just wouldn’t be enough for satisfying my craving for rum cake, it’s just so very small and leaves you wanting more, and my husband and I feeling somewhat cheated in this review. lol

While looking at the Tortuga site, I see that these tiny little 4 oz. cakes are sold only in 6 packs on their site… now that is more like it! And they have other sizes that make more sense to me as they come in 16 and 32 oz cakes. Now that is more like it, isn’t it?  I would recommend these cakes to anyone that likes rum cakes.

Both my husband and I agreed that the winner, of the two bites we had of each cake, was the original rum cake by far, it was much more moist and what you’d expect from a Rum Cake. The banana was good in a whole different way, but it just cannot compare to the Original.

You can order from Tortuga online at their website, it looks like they also have coffees, rum treats and gifts on their site. To check them out, please go to the link at the top of this review and click on the link. Seeing the prices of these cakes, perhaps I understand the small samples received, I couldn’t afford these… but if you can and you don’t bake, I’d say go for it.