7. Jamaican Rum Cake
Those aren’t chocolate chips, they’re chunks of gooey Jamaican rum cake, also known as fruit cake, black cake or Christmas cake. And it’s not just a Jamaican ting. If you’ve got West Indian family, you probably have at least one relative who bakes a black cake come holiday time that’s so intoxicating you’re liable to get black-out drunk after too many slices. If it’s called “Jamaican rum cake,” though, it’s almost certainly made with Wray and Nephew white rum. “We use a rum cake formula that has various different rums in it,” Nesberry’s founder Marlon Davis says of his variation, pictured above. Don’t expect to catch a buzz off your ice cream, though: “The amount of rum is controlled based on the Health Department,” Davis says.
Pictured: Nesberrys (Green Acres Mall, Valley Stream, NY, and 2 other locations; 516-881-7782)