Coconut Coquito Cocktail: An Adventure in a Glass (No Kidding)
Ready for a tropical adventure? Try making a coconut cocktail from scratch. Granted, it’s no walk on the beach — but you can certainly have a lot of fun and feel like a badass island woman as you transform the hard-husked coconut superfood into a smooth, sweet, rum-spiced punch. Martha Stewart, resident North American badass, offers step-by-step directions to husk the coconut, adding the raw flesh to your drink. Those directions are below — but if you wanted to take a lazier route and just buy organic coconut milk and coconut water, nobody would blame you.
This recipe makes about 10 cups.
Ingredients and Tools
Method
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
Test each of the three eyes at the stem end of coconut to see which is the softest. Then use an ice pick or a screwdriver and a hammer to pierce two of the eyes. Strain the water through a fine sieve into a bowl, and set it aside.
Place the coconut on a rimmed baking sheet and bake it for 15 minutes. Carefully wrap it with a kitchen towel, and place it on a solid, stable surface. Hit the area around the eyes of the coconut forcefully with a hammer or kitchen mallet. Remove the hard shell.
Use a vegetable peeler to remove the brown skin from the back of the coconut meat. Rinse the flesh under cold running water.
Finely grate the coconut using a box grater. Transfer the gratings to a large glass measuring cup. Add the reserved coconut water and rum; set aside.
Working in batches, in the jar of a blender, combine the coconut milk, cream of coconut, condensed milk, evaporated milk and coconut rum mixture.
Pour the punch into a pitcher, and add the cinnamon sticks. Refrigerate it, covered, for up to 2 days.
Stir your punch before serving, and pour it over ice cubes. Be sure to tell everyone how hard you worked to make it. Recall that people around the world work this hard every day. Then put your feet up and enjoy.
Thanks Martha Stewart!
image: alonis
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