Piña Colada

PIÑA COLADA

A Piña Colada (without the garnish)

Good morning everyone! Today I made a cocktail...well, it certainly has made its way to the mainstream but this is the second (!) time I've had one (the first time was back in 2006 in Cologne when I was an au pair)! (and immediately made two versions of it :D)

For us Finns at least (if someone knows better, do correct me!), the Piña Colada is a cocktail you've had abroad during happy hours and then expect to have the same drink "back home". Honestly speaking, sure, every now and then a person asks me at work "can I get a Piña Colada?" The problem arises when you look at the ingredients of this now-classic tiki cocktail. Let's take a look. The recipe was acquired from THE BONNEVILLE COLLECTION: TIKI COCKTAILS.

• 6 cl rum
• 6 cl pineapple juice
• 2 cl creamed coconut
• 2.5 cl half & half (a mixture of half cream, half milk)
• (tiki garnish)

Both the pineapple juice/coconut stuff is something that doesn't hold for many days. I believe the Piña Colada is one of those cocktails you can't really get from Finland...well perhaps in Helsinki during summer time from one specific/certain cocktail bar. Stocking the above mentioned products is not worth their price when you might have 1 request/week. So better just make these at home.

The Bonneville recipe used Appleton 12yo for their rum of choice. I made two version; in the first one I did as per recipe and the other one with Malibu (coconut flavored caribbean rum). The reason for this was a request by a person who isn't allowed to buy strong spirits yet and Malibu being 21% ABV, so perfect for this occasion.

Shake the ingredients with ice, strain into a proper glass (tiki/hurricane, large-ish wine goblet) and garnish. I didn't have any pineapple or proper tiki garnish for that matter, so I left those out.

I have got to say, when I made the two versions, the Malibu one tasted better! It had that Piña Colada feel to it; the Appleton 12yo version tasted...well, not only more boozy but as if it lacked body. Were I to make this cocktail again, I would totally use Malibu. Otherwise the measures were great; the cocktail was creamy and pineappl-y :)

Some recipes use a blender but to heck with those.