Tortuga Rum Company’s Caribbean Rum Bun is a delicious, updated recipe of a favorite West Indian treat enjoyed year round in Cayman, especially during the Easter season. Tortuga has introduced attractive new packaging for its Caribbean Rum Bun and launched a special Easter season 2003 promotion.
The latest addition to Tortuga’s gourmet product line, the Tortuga Caribbean Rum Bun is baked fresh daily from an original Tortuga Rum Company recipe. Tortuga’s creation is the first commercially baked Caribbean bun made with rum. Each bun has generous portions of spice, raisins and mixed peel soaked in famous oak barrel-aged Tortuga Gold Rum. This exceptionally rich, moist and irresistible taste of the popular traditional Caribbean spice bun has become a hit with locals—and a growing number of visitors too. The 28 oz., vacuum-sealed packages are available year round at all Grand Cayman Tortuga retail outlets and in local supermarkets and select stores island wide.Ê
Small breads probably originated with the monks at St. Albania’s Abbey, who baked and distributed similar sweet rolls iced with sugary crosses as Lenten alms to the poor. This is the traceable origin of our sturdy, Caribbean Easter spice bun (and in North America, lighter, dinner-roll like Hot Cross Buns which appear only during Lent.) The spiced bread became an Easter Season tradition that endured and 17th century colonial English planters brought this custom with them to the West Indies. As with many things culinary, Caribbean cooks of African descent later greatly improved the original English recipe. And now Tortuga Rum Company has improved it even more by adding a touch of Tortuga Gold Rum.

Today’s traditional Caribbean bun is a dense, moist spice loaf popular not only at Easter and Christmas but enjoyed year round, especially in Jamaica and Cayman.Ê And in spite of the proliferation of fast food franchises, “Bun and cheese” remains a popular snack. A thick piece of Tastee canned cheese between two hefty pieces of bun is a meal in itself. In Cayman, locals will tellÊ you that “proper” bun ‘n cheese should be two inches thick:, with a half inch of cheese between two three-quarter inch slices of bun, eaten in small bites and chewed slowly to savor each bite. It provides a half-day’s sustenance.

The Caribbean bun’s cultural importance is greater than you may have realized. However, judging from its year-round popularity, eating bun and cheese today can hardly be considered penance—and Tortuga’s Rum Bun may even elevate it to an epicurean experience.
For information, contact: Tortuga Rum Company Ltd. Grand Cayman.Ê Ph: (345) 949-7701/ 949-7867; fax: (345) 949-6322 or E-mail: [email protected]
——-