A rum cake is an easy, festive addition to any holiday table. The rum-spiked sponge is baked in a Bundt pan, and drizzled and brushed with a rum syrup. The result is a cake that’s so moist and rich that it doesn’t need a glaze or frosting. It goes perfectly with a cup of coffee, or to top off a day of celebrations. However, if you’re abstaining from alcohol, don’t believe people when they tell you all the alcohol bakes off during the cooking process. Spoiler alert — it doesn’t.

Typically, alcohol is merely a carrier for the flavor a particular recipe calls for, whether it’s a scrumptious rum cake or a red wine sauce for your steak. Alcohol also enhances the flavors of other ingredients, like in a penne alla vodka where the vodka makes the tomato stand out and tenderizes meat. It’s a versatile ingredient, and there are plenty of reasons to use it, but you should remember that while a significant amount of the alcohol does cook off, it’s never 100% gone.

Read more: 10 Of The Healthiest Beers You Can Drink

When cooking with booze, it’s impossible to cook or bake all the alcohol out of a dish or dessert, but how much remains in the final presentation depends on a few things, namely temperature and length of time spent cooking, as well as the surface area of your cooking dish. Alcohol evaporates faster at higher temperatures, and more alcohol cooks off the longer something bakes. No matter what, though, alcohol molecules will stick to molecules of other things in the dish and stay put. It has been shown that even cooking dishes for hours still leaves a small percentage of alcohol remaining in the dish.

Furthermore, it’s valuable to take into account your cooking vessel’s size when creating rum cake. The bigger the surface area, the more interaction with oxygen the dish gets, this makes the alcohol evaporate quicker in a larger pan or skillet. It’s also necessary to think about the ingredients you’re using and the dish you’re preparing. A rum syrup drizzle that tops off your rum cake probably won’t have cooked enough (or at the right temperature) to evaporate much alcohol. The cake itself, however, usually contains anywhere from a half to a full cup of rum, yielding a baked cake with around 5% alcohol (equivalent to a beer!).

Even though other dishes may not be as alcohol-rich as rum cake, there could be several reasons why you might want to substitute the alcohol in any dish you prepare. It could be due to health concerns, recovery, or religious beliefs, but you shouldn’t feel excluded from the world of alcohol-infused bakes. Many methods are available to substitute the alcohol in rum cake and other dishes that require alcohol, because it is the flavor that matters – the alcohol merely serves as the carrier. A variety of cooking and baking ingredient swaps provide similar flavors without the use of alcohol. These substitutes include different kinds of vinegars, herbs, spices, and syrups.

You can create a rum cake with rum extracts or rum-flavored syrups, or by using a mix of ingredients such as white grape juice, molasses, and almond extract. Alternatively, you can find non-alcoholic rum. A host of non-alcoholic spirits can replace their alcoholic equivalents so, make your next rum cake alcohol-free, and stop worrying about the alcohol content in your next baked product.

Read the original article on Daily Meal.