Greetings Rum Cake Lovers!
How These Cakes Came to Be...
November 2015 - There I was, relaxing by the fireplace with my dog mulling over a name for these cakes, chatting with with a girlfriend on the phone who suggested "Rumba!" and thus - Rumba Cakes was born.
Christmas 2014 - I had gone into production with these cakes for a private client as holiday gifts for very special friends - all of whom loved them and raved about them. Bundt pans stored away over the summer, are now dusted off, oiled and gleaming and ready to go.
Fall 2015 - I sought a cottage permit to bake at home in CA. This law was just created in 2012 to allow artisans to create certain categories of products at home, so here we are. I can relax by the fire, write books and poetry, sip hot apple cider, and watch over my cakes steeping overnight in the warming oven.
Each cake takes 12 hours to make. That's right. One at a time, completely hand made. No mass produced products here. All ingredients are organic but rum, salt, baking powder and vanilla. Where possible, they are local. There is no wheat and no refined/cane/beet sugar. They are made in a beautiful sunlit home with glass walls surrounded by gardens and open space. Birds chirp and soft music plays, waterfalls softly sound in the background. Yes, all those magic touches infuse into these cakes.
This is the world's ultimate rum cake, super premium, handmade one at a time, and the first with these more healthful gold standards set. It is incredibly delicious.
It is being introduced in Marin this holiday season - stay tuned for locations to be announced where it will be sold by the slice - and it is sold whole, direct from moi, the baker. There will necessarily be limited production for the holidays, and a finite number of happy rum cake lovers may order and pay in advance for your cake.
Special Intro Pricing Direct:
Full Size Rumba Cake - over 5# - Serves 24 - $125 picked up at San Rafael bakery
($5.20 per 3.3 oz slice)
Half Size Rumba Cake - Serves 12 - $75
($6.25 per 3.3 oz slice)
Delivery in SF Bay Area - As Quoted
Gift Wrap/Packaging: $15 - $25
Sorry no shipping available, but can can be packed for you to ship
At Home with your Cake - Enjoy warmed with whipped cream and spiked coffee. Mmmm.
Contact the baker:
info (at) kcalldesign (dot) com
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And now we answer these 2 questions:
Why Unrefined Coconut Sugar?
Cane sugar, refined, is no longer a "food". Were it invented today, technically it would have to be classified as a "drug" - it has no nutritional value, and it is a harmful drug at that, clinically proven more addictive than cocaine. (Original report, University of Bordeaux, France, repeated studies verifying those finds easily available online, search for "sugar more addictive than cocaine, clinical studies".) It has become a global addiction, a global epidemic and it's causing a global health crisis. It is commonly in 80% of foods in grocery stores, including pet foods, and has become the single biggest contributor worldwide to chronic and degenerative disease, including heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and obesity.
Coconut sugar comes from the pure sap tapped from the flower bud of certain varieties of coconut palm, which is collected and then simply dehydrated into crystals. It is unrefined, low glycemic (less impact on blood sugar), and delicious - it tastes like light brown sugar with slight caramel flavor - so it can be easily used in many everyday or baking applications, substituted one-for-one.
Environmentally, cane sugar is an annual grass like crop, whose vast plantation fields are generally slashed and burned after harvest, which contributes to global warming. By contrast, coconut sugar is a tree based sweetener - whose trees live and produce for decades, with forest canopies that oxygenate the atmosphere and provide habitat for wildlife. Coconut sugar uses only 20% of the environmental resources as cane, and produces 3-4 times more yield per acre. Other renowned tree based sweeteners are maple, date, fig and pomegranate. These trees have been valued for centuries for their renewable benefits.
Why Spelt Flour?
In the last 50-100 years, modern wheat has become so overly hybridized that it bears little resemblance to the grain humans ate for thousands of years. Once, wheat had long stalks with small grain heads, which lent it to being harvesting and threshed by hand, and it was composed of a natural balance of hull, bran, starch and germ. Now, man-made wheat has been bred with short stalks for mechanized harvesting and with supersized endosperms with greater starch production. The chromosomes have been changed, the protein molecules have been changed - which compose the gluten make-up of wheat - so therefore the gluten content has also been changed. Modern wheat today, and it's gluten component, no longer bears any resemblance to ancient grains. Holistic nutritionists believe this is is a key part of what is causing an epidemic of gluten intolerance and celiac disease. The ancient grain is no longer eaten whole as it once was. Now, the processed foods industry separates and sells products such as "wheat starch" , commonly added to many processed foods, and "wheat gluten", added to breads.
Spelt is still an ancient grain. It is a form of wheat, a relative of wheat, yet it has not been hybridized by humans like wheat has. It has gluten, but it's structure is more original, and it seems to be more digestible to many. It is delicious and can be used in most applications in place of modern wheat. It is milled into whole flour and refined flour. This cake is made with the refined version for more close replacement to the refined white wheat pastry flour typically used in this cake recipe.
