Coconut Thai Mar-TEA-ni

This Coconut Thai Mar-TEA-ni takes its inspiration from the delicious Thai ice tea I like to order when I’m at a Thai restaurant.

Over the weekend I stumbled upon a fun site called Mixology Monday, MxMo, which is basically a monthly online cocktail party. How fun is that? Each month a host selects a theme for the upcoming event. This month’s host is JFL from Rated R Cocktails who chose coconut for this month’s cocktail party theme. Ok, I like that. I wanted to join in on the party! I thought coconuts sounded simple enough but I knew I needed to be a little bit more original than a Mai Tai or Pina Colada. My first thought for making a coconut cocktail for MxMo immediately went to some sort of a spiked Thai ice tea.

Ok, let’s get started. First…

Make the Sweetened Coconut Milk

Thai ice tea is very sweet. Typically, sweetened condensed milk is used. But since this month’s theme is coconuts, I decided to make a sweetened, coconut milk instead. Of course I could have just used some coconut cream, it’s very coconutty and sweet, but I wanted it more milky sweet. I had a can of coconut milk and coconut palm sugar. That works! I put a can of coconut milk (don’t use light) in a small sauce pan and added some coconut palm sugar, and heated it to combine. I prefer the coconut palm sugar that is more syrupy than dried, but you could use either.

Next…

Make the Iced Tea

I had some trouble finding Thai tea at my local market so I went to the internet and found a recipe from Bon Appetite to make the tea portion of this cocktail. While it’s not exactly like Thai tea, it’s really delicious but doesn’t have the vibrant orange coloring that you get with Thai tea. If you have Thai tea, by all means go ahead and use it! I used black tea bags with a syrup of water, sugar, star anise, and vanilla bean as the recipe instructed.

Now your ready to…

Make the Mar-TEA-ni

Time to add the good stuff…Rum! I used a combination of regular Bacardi rum and some Malibu coconut rum for an extra coconut kick! Just shake it all up together in a cocktail glass and you’ve got yourself one delicious Coconut Thai Mar-TEA-ni.

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Coconut Thai MarTEAni

Ingredients

For the tea:

15 black tea bags
7 C. water
10 star anise
1 vanilla bean
3 Tbls. sugar
1 C. water

For the Coconut Milk:

1 Can coconut milk (don't use light)
2-4 Tbls. Coconut Palm Sugar (depending how sweet you want it)

For the "Tea-ni"

1 shot white Rum (I used Bacardi)
½ shot Malibu Coconut Rum
2 shots prepared ice tea
½ shot prepared sweetened coconut milk

Instructions

Put coconut milk and coconut palm sugar in saucepan, bring to boil while stirring/whisking to combine and melt the coconut sugar. Set aside to cool, then refrigerate.
Meanwhile, in small saucepan combine star anise, sugar and water. Bring to a boil. Add vanilla bean (scrap the seeds out and add the seeds and bean pod). Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Set aside to cool.
Make tea according to package directions. I brought water to a boil, removed from heat, added the tea bags and let it steep for about 3 minutes. Remove tea bags and pour into pitcher. Add syrup (I left the anise and vanilla bean in it and strained it out prior to using the tea) and chill in refrigerator.
To make the Mar-TEA-ni:
In cocktail shaker filled with ice, add rums, ice tea and sweetened coconut milk. Shake well, strain into martini glass. Garnish with the vanilla bean and star anise, if desired.