Welcome To Wonkette Happy Hour, With This Week’s Cocktail, The Foaming Pineapple!

Greetings, Wonketeers! I’m Hooper, your bartender. Mother’s Day is just around the corner. Time to take a look through the recipe index and pick out some champagne cocktails. Mimosas are the traditional choice, and I’ll run down our options for that. But for Mom, let’s get fancier and put a tiki spin on the classic. Let’s make a Foaming Pineapple. Here’s the recipe:

1 oz Planteray Three Star Rum

2 oz pineapple juice

½ oz creme de coconut

Brut champagne

Nutmeg

Shake rum, pineapple juice, and creme de coconut. Pour into a coupe glass and top with brut champagne. Sprinkle with nutmeg and serve. 

Champagne cocktails have been a part of the bar scene from the beginning. Back in 1862, Jerry Thomas included a “Champagne Cocktail” in his seminal book. Champagne seems to elevate any simple cocktail into something refined and elegant. The French 75 is still my go-to behind the bar when a customer can’t decide on a drink. Lemon, sugar, gin, and champagne are a match made in heaven. 

Of course, we can’t talk about champagne cocktails and Mother’s Day without mentioning mimosas. I’m not a fan of orange juice in cocktails. Orange juice is too sweet and not acidic enough to balance a drink. Still, it’s a classic combination that I’ll pour out by the dozen at a Mother’s Day brunch. If you offer some alternative to OJ, however, things get more interesting. A peach bellini follows the same template as the mimosa, using peach puree instead of orange juice. Any fruit puree can swap in for the peach successfully. I’ve made blackberry and raspberry bellinis for Mother’s Day to great success. Use inspiration and your favorite fruit and you won’t go wrong. 

This particular variation on the bellini format uses a pina colada base instead of fruit puree to build a tasty Mother’s Day cocktail. It’s a bit strong for brunch, but a solid start to a Mother’s Day dinner. The creme de coconut is really special in this drink. I’m not fond of artificial ingredients as a rule, but creme de coconut is very much the exception. It has a ton of emulsifiers in it to keep the coconut oil and sugar together. Those emulsifiers fortify the champagne bubbles, transforming a quick fizz of champagne into a thick head of pineapple and coconut scented foam. The foam should hold up well after the drink’s been prepared, making for a stunning presentation. 

Let’s talk ingredients:

Planteray Three Star Rum: Bacardi is the industry standard for “white rum” in most recipes. It’s also flavorless to the point of being indistinguishable from vodka. A good white rum should be dry, with hints of sugarcane and ripe fruit. Planteray Three Star knocks it out of the park. Feel free to try Don Q or a white rum made by a local distiller as a substitute.

Pineapple juice:  Elena of Stir And Strain wrote the original version of this drink. She batched the cocktail, planning to make 4-6 at one go. For efficiency and minimum dilution, she froze the pineapple juice into cubes and assembled the pina colada base in a blender. It’s a great strategy for catering or an outdoor party, but for single servings of the drink I’d prefer to use freshly opened pineapple juice and my trusty cocktail shaker. I use the small cans of Dole pineapple juice for all my cocktails. Freshness is a good thing for most drinks like this; a mimosa with fresh squeezed OJ is a delight. But fresh pineapple is acidic to the point of being caustic. Stick with the canned stuff here.

Creme de coconut: This is not the same thing as coconut cream; stay out of the Asian section of the supermarket when you’re looking for it. Creme de coconut is almost coconut frosting in terms of texture and sugar level. It’s artificial as heck, vital for a decent pina colada, and utterly delicious. Accept no substitutes. 

Brut champagne: I use splits of champagne whenever I can. I’ve been saying champagne throughout this article, but any dry sparkling wine, like prosecco, will fill the bill. Always cover the cork with a towel when opening a champagne bottle. I neglected to follow this rule when I was bartending a Mother’s Day Brunch years ago; the cork ricocheted off the ceiling and nearly took out someone’s 90-year-old grandmother. Flying corks are bad. Cover the bottle. 

Nutmeg: A must for any good pina colada variant. The spice cuts through the coconut and pineapple wonderfully. 

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