Welcome To Wonkette Happy Hour, With This Week's Cocktail, Starfish And Coffee!

Maple syrup and jam.

A little pick me up, when you need to be picked up.

Greetings, Wonketeers! I’m Hooper, your bartender. Today I’ve got a buck-wild take on a White Russian for you to play with. It’s a great little dessert drink to enjoy while you’re setting up the Christmas tree. (No, the Grog household hasn’t put up our tree yet, we’ve been busy.) Let’s enjoy a Starfish and Coffee. Here’s the recipe. 

Starfish and Coffee

1 ½ oz Pussers Rum

¾ oz Grind Double Espresso Liqueur

1 oz fresh espresso

½ oz Coca-Cola Syrup (below)

2 shakes cocoa bitters

Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker. Add ice, then shake. Pour into a double old fashioned glass. Top with Coca-Cola cream (below) and a sprinkle of ground cinnamon. 

Coca-Cola Syrup

1 bottle ( 355 ml) Mexican Coca-Cola

1 cup sugar

1 1.5” cinnamon stick

3-4 shakes Tajin

Add all ingredients to a saucepan. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to a simmer. Let simmer for 30 minutes. Strain into a bottle for later use. 

Coca-Cola Cream

2 oz heavy whipping cream

1 oz Coca-Cola Syrup

Beat until soft peaks form.

So … yeah. This one is a bit over the top. It more or less staggered into existence; the original recipe that inspired me tastes almost nothing like this creation. This started life as a drink called “But First, Coffee,” published by Punch. The flavors in this cocktail intrigued me. If you didn’t follow the link, the original was coffee, Kahlua, Coca-Cola syrup, and tequila. As an adventurous mixologist, that appealed to me. Tequila, coffee, and cola flavors? I’d never seen that combination before. How well do they play together?

The answer was “not very well.” It wasn’t bad, exactly. But when you tasted everything in the glass, you were left wondering, “What is that flavor?” And not in a good way. A quick consultation of my flavor bible made it pretty clear: Coffee and rum go well together. Cola and rum go well together. Cola and coffee are a little awkward together, but they do work. Clearly, swapping the tequila for my favorite rum would be a good option. And it was — there was a need for some bitters to smooth over some rough edges, but the end result was tasty.

It wasn’t amazing, though. And I wanted something over the top for the holidays, especially for a crowd of Wonketeers who have had a rather rough week. I had seen an absolutely berserk rum old fashioned with Coca-Cola foam on YouTube a year or so ago; that monstrosity involved melting sheets of gelatin in Coca-Cola syrup and making foam with a $100 CO2 creamer. A bit expensive for one drink. The simpler answer was to use cream, and take this drink in the direction of a White Russian. The cola syrup and cream tasted good together; very good, in fact. The caramel and cinnamon of the syrup leapt forward in the cream. A dash of cinnamon, and everything was sweet but balanced. All we needed was a name. A drink this quirky deserved a nod to Prince’s visit to The Muppets, and the Starfish and Coffee was born. 

Ingredient shot. The cocktail vanished in a slow and satisfying manner after this photo was taken.

Let’s talk ingredients:

Pusser’s Rum: My favorite rum. A rich Demerara rum from Guyana, with tons of caramel flavor, patterned after the original British Navy rum. A funky Jamaican rum like Appleton Estate would be wonderful here. Even Mount Gay would be fine. 

Grind Double Espresso Liqueur:  I hate Kahlua passionately. The coffee in Kahlua is bad, the rum in Kahlua is bad, and the sugar is off the charts. This coffee liqueur is much smoother than Kahlua, and the coffee flavors are more prominent. Experiment and find a not-Kahlua that you like; there are several options out there. 

Fresh Espresso: I recently fell in love with a classic Moka pot for late-night espresso. It’s not hard to use when you get the hang of it, and perfect for an evening when you want coffee but don’t want to make a full pot. Note that I have you add all the ingredients together in the shaker tin, and then add the ice; I don’t want the hot espresso to melt the ice cubes overmuch. Tempering the espresso with the other ingredients solves that problem.

Coca Bitters: One shake of Angostura bitters will work fine here. Without the bitters, there’s a sharp divide between the rum and coffee flavors in the drink. 

Mexican Coca-Cola: For those not in the know, Mexican cola uses cane sugar as its sweetener; American cola uses corn syrup. There’s no good reason for this, other than the corn sugar lobby in America is powerful. American cola can be used, but I’d rather keep sugar flavors all the way through the reduction. 

Cinnamon: Use a small stick; the cinnamon flavor reads pretty intensely in the drink. 

Tajin: The citrus from the tajin is a welcome addition; the spice is barely noticeable, but pleasant. This ingredient is a holdover from when this was a tequila-based cocktail; feel free to swap in some lime and orange peel, or some allspice berries, or our friends at Penzey’s practically tajin Pico Fruta. 

Heavy Cream: Whip the cream into soft peaks; too stiff and it won’t melt into the drink. This cola whipped cream is remarkably tasty — don’t be surprised if you lick the bowl after. 

In summary and conclusion, drink well, drink often, and tip your bartender — donate to Wonkette at the link below!  

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