King cake cocktail

It’s Mardi Gras time!! And instead of eating a slice of king cake, let’s drink one.

This cocktail has a cinnamon and almond flavor to it and has the traditional purple, green, and gold sprinkles that are on top of a king cake. The only thing missing is the little baby hidden in the drink. Or hanging off the side like I wanted to do but I couldn’t find one of those little babies.

King cake is in honor of the Bible’s Three Kings. The cakes are topped with colored sanding sugars (or sprinkles as I keep calling them)- purple for justice, green for faith, and gold for power.

I wanted to use the sanding sugars sprinkled on top of the drink but kind of went a little heavy handed and it’s hard to discern the 3 different colors. So next I wanted to try and rim the glass with the 3 different sanding sugars which was a little bit harder than I thought it would be but I like the effect of how the sanding sugars fell into the glass and makes the top look so colorful like the cake.

Years ago when I was a bartender, I always worked tuesday nights. So Just for something fun and different, I liked to always throw a Mardi Gras Fat Tuesday party at the bar where I worked. I talked a little bit about it here where I told the story of my attempt at making a king cake. Then there was this one year I made a really good Gumbo dish but I lost the recipe and I’ve never been able to get it right since then.

King cake cocktail

( serves 1)

1 3/4 oz rum

1/2 oz cinnamon whiskey ( I used Fireball)

1 cup almond milk original (use any kind of milk you want)

1/4 tsp almond extract

1/2 oz orange juice

purple, green, gold colored sanding sugar

Place first 5 ingredients in a shaker with ice and shake well. If rimming the glass, use an orange wedge (or lemon or lime) to rub on outside of glass. Divide the 3 different sugars on a plate and dip sections of the glass into each section of sanding sugar. Then pour shaker into glass. Or just pour contents of shaker in a glass and sprinkle the 3 different sanding sugars on top of the cocktail.

Happy Mardi Gras!