Today's cocktail: Chocolate Orange

Today's ingredients: kahlua, agricole rum, Cointreau

Today's vocabulary: pluff mud

Yep, it's been a minute since the last post. I keep picking up more and more freelance work, so except for a couple hours on weekday mornings, I'm at a computer or a microphone producing broadcast radio content for markets across the country from 5am to 10pm. I'm working more hours, making less money, and except for a few scheduling quirks, I'm having a lot more fun than at my last gig.

Just because I haven't posted doesn't mean I haven't partaken. On the contrary, I have a bit of a backlog of cocktails to roll out, but I wanted to get back to it with one that was actually an original creation. That's not to say the same thing hasn't been done out there before, but this one did not come from any other recipe, blog, book, or whatever besides the ol' noggin here. It also helped that I keep coming across recipes that call for Cointreau, and I keep subbing in triple sec (which we'll again see in an upcoming post on the B-52), so let's go ahead and get the real thing. It's pretty inexpensive, after all. Also, the father-in-law makes his own kahlua, and he's proud of it. It's really good stuff, much heavier on the chocolate than the store-bought stuff, and he'll often say, "You know what would be good in that? Some kahlua," meaning his kahlua. So, let's humor him here.

The weather is trying its darnedest to turn warmer here, but the nights can still be a little chilly, and for those of us who actually enjoy cold weather, it can be a nice reminder of winter (it'll also be a great way to get back into the winter mindset come fall). So, without further ado...

Chocolate Orange

This just sounded good. Chocolate oranges are great, but you can only find them around the winter holidays. I once worked with some folks who didn't know that these existed. Those poor, deprived souls. Anyway, this only took two rounds of experimentation to get right:

• 1 part homemade kahlua
• 1 part agricole rum
• 2 parts Cointreau
• Pour all ingredients into a lowball glass, stir, add large ice mould if desired

The first attempt used equal parts of all ingredients and just wasn't orange-y enough; the above ratios did the trick. Now remember: the homemade kahlua was chocolate-heavy, so if you try this with regular kahlua, you may want to double that amount, or you can grab some chocolate liqueur at the store. The Cointreau speaks for itself, but why the agricole rum?

We haven't discussed agricole rum here much since it doesn't really lend itself to popular cocktails. Agricole rum is made from sugar cane juice rather than from molasses like most popular rums. It carries a much earthier, mustier, marshier, generally swampy aroma, and you can actually taste a lot of molasses in agricole rum because it wasn't used as the primary distillate to begin with. The wife calls the combo an essence of pluff mud, which is about as accurate a description as there is. It's safe to Google that term, by the way. Folks familiar with the Lowcountry of South Carolina will know what it is.

Anyway, the agricole rum was added to pull out more of the coffee and chocolate notes with its own molasses, giving the overall cocktail more weight and savoriness, so rather than sipping on a thin, orange-tinged chocolate cooler, this really became the liquid essence of the chocolate orange holiday treat.

Before we wrap, a note about ice. Last time, when trying to re-create my first all-time favorite whiskey cocktail, temperature had a significant bearing on the nose and taste of the drink. Warmer meant heavier, cooler meant lighter. Same thing here. At room temperature, this is a dead ringer for a chocolate orange flavor profile: heavy chocolate with a strong hint of orange. I dropped in a large ice cube to see if it would make for a decent warm-weather drink, and the cooling effect also highlighted the orange and muted the chocolate and coffee notes. Just an FYI in case you need to alter your ingredient ratios to accommodate your temperature preference.

Pretty sure I'll be revisiting this one when the leaves start to change colors. Enjoy.