Friday Happy Hour: Warm Your Thanksgiving With a Cruzan Winter Break Cocktail
Editor’s Note: back and better than ever, our long-lost St. Croix mixologist, Jesse Card, returns to his old Friday Happy Hour haunts today with a warm and wonderful new cocktail recipe featuring Cruzan Rum’s fantastic new Estate Diamond Light…
Just because it’s 83-degrees and sunny most every day in the Caribbean, it doesn’t mean we couldn’t use a warm winter cocktail from time to time.
That’s right, nighttime temps in the islands do skew a bit toward the chilly side this time of year, a product of something we in St. Croix call the Christmas Winds.
- 2 parts Cruzan® Estate Diamond® Light Rum
- 1 parts Pineapple Juice
- 1/4 parts 2:1 Muscovado Syrup
- 5 parts Hot Peppermint Tea
Steady, fairly strong, and (at least for us) cold breezes, these hints of the prodigiously plummeting temps endured by our friends up north return to St. Croix each year round about now, cooling our nights a bit more than some of us would like.
I hear you laughing, but these ill winds actually cut to the bone for those of us conditioned to island life! To cope, I created The Cruzan Winter Break, a spicy rum-based seasonal respite that works whether you’re in front of a roaring fire, or on an island boardwalk.
Here’s how I like to keep warm when it gets down to a frigid 72-degrees…
Method:
Combine your Cruzan Estate Diamond Light, pineapple juice and Muscovado syrup in a toddy glass and stir. (To make the syrup, simply combine two parts Muscovado sugar to one part water.) Slowly add tea to the glass and garnish with fresh grated cinnamon and stick. That’s it!
Cruzan Estate Diamond Light is my absolute favorite rum to mix in cocktails. The integrity of this well-aged clean rum makes it so easy to get rich balanced flavor into any drink. Don’t be fooled by its Chardonnay hue either – wood and spice are here to dance!
I love using Muscavado sugar for toddy-style drinks because it has a really unique texture that adds a round finish to watery drinks. In a pinch, you can use a 2:1 Demerara sugar.
Thanks, Jesse! Winter hasn’t quite arrived to the UC South Florida HQ just yet, but I plan to crank down the a/c to cozy up on the couch with a few of these over the weekend. They’re THAT good, people!
Cruzan Estate Diamond Light is available most anywhere great rums are sold. Expect to pay about around US$20, a tremendous value for a rum of such excellent quality.
Cheers!
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