It´s time to get tropical, get merry and sing this happy line: “You are the pina to my colada”
UNDER THE PALMS: Sipping a Pina Colada in the evening sun while on holiday, you may think you look like the perfect picture of sophistication and elegance. But you actually enjoying the taste of white rum, pineapple juice and coconut cream combo. And you simply order one cocktail with umbrella because you think you should.
Creamy, fruity and delightfully retro, the cockail is the national drink of Puerto Rico. The iconic rum-based cocktail was first mixed up in 1950s. After tasting it for the first time, barman Joan Crawford supposedly deemed the drink “better than slapping Bette Davis in the face”. Make of that what you will, but Pina Colada soon was linked with umbrella and the words: “Toes in sand, drink in hand”.
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Make Pina Colada
You’ll need a blender for this recipe – and make sure you don’t use too much ice when blending as this will make the cocktail watery.
Ingredients:
Caster sugar 100g
White rum 60ml
Pineapple juice 75ml
Coconut cream 50ml
Pineapple wedge to garnish
Step 1:
Put the sugar and 100ml water in a pan and heat gently, stirring, until the sugar dissolves. Cool. This will make more than you need but will keep in the fridge for a couple of weeks.
Step 2:
Put the rest of the ingredients, 2 tsp of the sugar syrup and a small handful of ice in a blender and blitz until smooth. Pour into a pina colada cocktail glass, with more ice if you like, and garnish with a pineapple wedge before serving.

Let´s get Tropical
Pina Colada, or Pina in Spanish and Italian, tastes like pineapple and coconut. Blend it and the texture is like a smoothie, rich and thick. Serve over crushed ice and you hardly taste the white rum. For added flavour, garnish with cherries. If you think that a traditional cockail is too sweet, use coconut milk instead of cream of coconut. Wherever you are, it´s time to get tropical, get merry and sing the happy line: “You are the pina to my colada”
Fancy and well-known
It’s abundantly clear that bar-keepers in general are not at all fond of the overwhelmingly sweet cockail. This will be offensive to some because there are few drinks that speak of summertime by a holiday resort pool like a Pina Colada does. But that’s because it tastes and looks like suncream. It’s popular because it looks fancy, sounds fancy and is, for some reason, universally known.
I had my first Pina under the Caribbean sun served with such a cherished welcome advice and my toes in the sand: “A balanced holiday is Pina Colada in both hands.”