The Birthday Old Fashioned

One of the trends we noticed since starting Cocktails By Mail is how nice people are. There have been so many birthday orders sent! Seriously, people are super sweet. 

So we thought it would be appropriate to have a cocktail that was reminiscent of birthday cake. But we didn't want to do it in the '00s kind of Birthday Cake-flavoured-vodka-tini way.

Aluna Toasted Coconut Rum is the main player here. Now I can hear you screaming But it'll taste like suntan lotion! Don't worry, Aluna is lovely lovely stuff with nary a fake coconut whiff in sight. It's a blend of rums that are infused with toasted coconut and sustainably sourced coconut water. It's really soft, lovely, and tropical.

More St. Bart's tropical, less Magaluf. 

Next we took Dark Matter Spiced Rum from Aberdeenshire and infused it with pandan. 

Dark Matter uses ginger, long pepper, Thai green peppercorns, and allspice among other spices to infuse their rum. This brings a subtle heat and tons of spice aromas, kind of like a baking gingercake.

Pandan is a tropical plant from Southeast Asia. The leaves give off a wonderful vanilla-coconut-grassy-woody smell that's invocative and complex.
It brings a 'vanilla cake' note the to cocktail without being overt. 

So we've got coconut, vanilla, and spice. How to get that cake-y flavour?

Welcome Nixta Licor de Elote. A new product from Mexico, it is a liqueur made from ancestral cacahuazintle (kaka • wha • SINT • lay) maize, it's what gives the Birthday Old Fashioned its cakiness. Nixta tastes like lovely sweet southern USA style cornbread, and is a truly unique product unlike anything else. 

A touch of salted caramel rounds the cocktail out, and as they say in baking, the salt highlights all the other flavours and intensifies them. 
And literally for the cherry on top, a few dashes of cherry bitters.

We realllllyyyy like this drink and say dammit if you want to try it go ahead and order it for yourself! Why not after all? Cake isn't just for birthdays.