This time last year, Alex and I were in the Caribbean. I decided that I wanted to try to recreate that vibe at some point by having a vaguely Caribbean/tropical themed evening at home. I got impatient and didn't want to wait to plan out a meal and a date, so I decided that on Sunday we’d have pina coladas with a rum cake that we bought on our honeymoon last year. I enjoy pina coladas – I think that the best ones I’ve ever had were on a beach in Mexico over spring break years ago.

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Believe it or not, I’d never made pina coladas from scratch until now, although I'd bought a mix once or twice. I’m not really sure how “from scratch” to consider them. I bought cream of coconut and pineapple juice, and made them from the recipe on the back of the bottle. I bought Coco Real Cream of Coconut (affiliate link) (doesn't sound particularly classy, does it?) because it was on sale, and it didn’t have corn syrup in it like the other brand did (I can't remember what brand that was now, but it wasn't Latin American-sounding).

Pina Colada - I added a straw right after I took the picture

These were kind of tasty. I think I’ve built up the pina colada experience in my mind so much that anything I made was bound to disappoint. I’m not the biggest fan of pineapple juice, so I wanted a dominant coconut flavor. I didn’t realize that cream of coconut would have sugar added to it already (after all, coconut milk doesn’t), so these seemed incredibly sweet. I like sweets, but I just can’t drink that much sugar. After having two over the course of the evening, I just needed something savory, without any sugar at all.

I’ll probably experiment with these again because I still have a half bottle of cream of coconut leftover! I’ll play with the proportions. I’ll also look around to see if I can find a recipe with a different form of coconut and less sugar. Maybe I’ll make my own cream of coconut! I’ll definitely let you know what I find.

[Edit: I made a different pina colada recipe that wasn't too sweet in April 2010.]