Palm Sunday Cocktail

Recipe

2 oz Light Rum
1 oz Lime Juice
.75 oz Toasted Coconut Syrup
.75 tsp Pandan Extract
2 dashes Grapefruit Bitters
2 dashes Rhubarb Bitters
.25 oz Jamaican Rum float (optional)

Add all ingredients (except the Jamaican rum) to a shaker. Add ice and shake. Free pour all contents into a glass and top with the remaining rum. Add a straw and garnish with pineapple or palm fronds.

View other Holy Day cocktails.

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It’s Holy Week, the most important and consequential seven days in all of human history, when Jesus suffered, died, and was raised. Each of these days carries significance, so I’m crafting a cocktail for each one.

But it all begins on Palm Sunday: a strange day full of hope, expectation, worship, and joy (and quite a bit of human misunderstanding). Lent is a season of brooding and fasting, but because Sundays are still feast days (and because of palms, of course) we’re doing a tiki drink!

On Palm Sunday, Jesus entered the city of Jerusalem in a way that symbolized to the Jewish people that he was their long-awaited king coming to rescue them from their exile.

The people come out and lay their coats and palm leaves on the road, ushering Jesus with fevered excitement and joy. However, while they thought he was coming as a violent, political, conquering king, he instead intended to save them from an even deeper spiritual exile.

I tried to capture these contrasts in this drink. It is a riff on a daiquiri, and is bright, refreshing, and tart, with multiple fruit bitters for complexity. However through the middle of it are these deep, heavier notes of toasted coconut and pandan. It’s a fantastic drink.

Blessed is he who drinks in the name of the Lord. Cheers!

Ingredient Notes

For the rums, I used Plantation 3 Stars Rum for the main drink and Smith & Cross Jamaican Rum for the (optional) float. Use what you have, but for this drink, the light rum should be a rum blend, so Bacardi by itself won’t work. And for the float, use something with some punch and character, not just any gold or spiced rum.

For the bitters, I’d recommend Fee Brothers Rhubarb Bitters and Grapefruit Bitters. You can substitute Orange Bitters for the grapefruit if you want, but the Rhubarb bitters are amazing and you should just have them (they’re especially good in plain seltzer on a summer day)!

Now some words about the niche ingredients. People often use pandan simple syrup for cocktails, but I just added straight pandan extract into the shaker tin. It’s potent, and an acquired taste, so don’t put more in than I recommend, and you may even prefer less.

The last ingredient is Liber & Co’s Toasted Coconut syrup. Everything Liber and Co make is fantastic and this is no exception. I don’t know what else could work. I’d be curious what cream of coconut would do here, but you wouldn’t get the toasty notes and it would be a very different drink. Coconut water wouldn’t provide the sweetness and texture. If you think of something let me know! Here’s the recipe card, for your saving and pinning convenience.