
Danish Rum Cream from the recipes of Patrick White
My name is Dominic Hon, and this is my second attempt at cooking a recipe from Patrick White’s collection. My first effort was his surprisingly delightful mushroom and cauliflower Savoury Strudel (see previous post).
In continuation of the Patrick White theme, I thought I would give his Danish Rum Cream a go. The recipe seemed easy and straightforward enough. My conversion measurements are in brackets for those more metrically-inclined. Call me old-fashioned, but I like the old measurements, there’s something quite satisfying about not being so rigid to the nearest gram.
Danish rum cream
5 egg yolks
²⁄3 cup (4 oz) sifted icing sugar (100 – 125 g)
½ cup rum (120 g)
1 tbsp gelatine (I used powdered gelatine as I didn’t have the sheets)
¼ cup water (50 g)
1 pint cream whipped (600 ml – I just used a large carton)
5 egg whites stiffly beaten

The ingredients
Beat egg yolks with sifted sugar and stir in rum. Soften gelatine in water and dissolve over hot water. Stir into rum mixture till well combined.
Fold in cream using spatula and lastly stiffly beaten whites.

Folding in the beaten egg whites
Pour into glass bowl and chill for at least 3 hours.

Ready for the fridge
Raspberry sauce
Push 1 cup tinned raspberries through sieve.

Drain the raspberries and push through sieve
Bring to boil with syrup from tin. Chill.
I made the rum cream mixture to instructions and left it to set overnight in the fridge. The following day, just before serving, all that was to do was to spoon the chilled raspberry sauce over the rum cream, then finished it off with a blob of light whipped cream as an added garnish.
The only comment about the recipe would be to reduce the amount of gelatine, according to one’s taste. The old imperial measurements are a bit of a mystery – Was it an American, English or Australian measurement? How much is one tablespoon – is it a heaped tablespoon? Or rounded? Or leveled flat? Is a dessertspoon considered a tablespoon? I ended up with a rounded tablespoon as a compromise. While this was probably fine, the end result was a bit ‘marshmallow-like’. It may not suit modern palates more used to smooth mousses.
As to the taste – lovely – the tart raspberry sauce balanced out the sweetness from the rum cream very well, and you could taste the subtle rum flavour. I liked it, and from the photo at the end of the meal, so did my guests.

Nothing left except some very satisfied diners
In future if I were to make this again, I would probably reduce the gelatine, or skip it altogether, and use fresh raspberries instead for an even more intense flavour and colour punch.
Definitely the right dessert to go with White’s The Eye of the Storm on DVD –acerbic, rich and slightly heady. Wonderful.