Halloween Mai Tai

Shanna

What happens when Vodka puts on a Halloween Costume. It becomes a Mai Tai! Classic Mai Tai made with Pau Maui Vodka in place of traditional rums. Recipe based off Trader Vic's Mai Tai.

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Prep Time 5

Total Time 5

Servings 1 Cocktail

Ingredients

1.5 ounces Pau Maui Vodka
.75 ounce orange liqueur
.75 ounce lime juice
.5 ounce Orgeat
.25 ounce rich simple syrup*
.5 ounce dark rum I used Mahina rum

Garnish:

lime wheel or small lime cut in half width wise
Fresh mint sprigs

Instructions

Fill a cocktail glass ( large rocks glass with pebble ice). Add all the ingredients except the dark rum into a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Shake well and strain into glass. Top with dark rum. Garnish with lime and mint. Serve.

Notes

Mai Tai’s call for rock candy syrup, demerara syrup or a *rich simple syrup. Demerara sugar is harder to find and it's easy to make a rich simple syrup at home. Go with a 2:1 sugar to water ratio - a cup of sugar to half a cup of water. Heat and stir until sugar is dissolved, let cool until ready to use. Store in fridge in an airtight container. It will keep for 2 weeks.

Halloween Mai Tai. What happens when one spirit gets dressed up as another for Halloween. Spirit. Get it? I crack myself up. This post is sponsored by Pau Maui Vodka.

I love Halloween. I also love Halloween cocktails like this Halloween Mai Tai. This cocktail is a trick and a treat! A trick because I have replaced traditional rum with Pau Maui Vodka. Pau Maui Vodka came up with a fun challenge for Halloween cocktail creation.

Take a traditional cocktail made with another alcohol or spirit and replace with vodka. This Mai Tai is Pau Maui Vodka's "Halloween costume".

I just loved this idea of a halloween costume for a cocktail. I also love changing out the ingredients in traditional cocktails with other liquors. Making a mule with rum instead of vodka, a pina colada with tequila instead of rum. The possibilities are endless and really delicious. This vodka mai tai surprised me. I really love how it tastes.

I went with a Mai Tai made with vodka because the Mai Tai is one of my favorite tiki drinks, there have been so many iterations and variations of it created over the years, and I went with the traditional Trader Vic's recipe for my cocktail.

Because I used vodka in place of the darker hued rums my cocktail is doesn't have quite the same amber hue that Trader Vic's drink does. I also opted to float the dark rum on top, because I like the way it looks versus adding in to the cocktail shaker before pouring. A halloween costume cocktail also needs a fun glass to be in, these tiki glasses fit the bill nicely.

My glass straws from Surfside sips go great with these halloween Mai Tais. Pau Maui Vodka encourages their customers to help do their part against battling single use plastics. I am a big fan of not using plastic straws in cocktails so I use stainless steel, paper ( although paper is better for pics, not actually using for drinking they do get soggy quickly) and glass straws. Reuseable is best.

A few notes about the recipe:

This recipe is based off Trader Vic's Mai Tai. This is supposed to be made with vodka. Please don't come at me in comments saying this isn't a traditional mai tai. I know it isn't. It's a riff of the drink which is the purpose of this post.
Check notes for the simple syrup recipe
You can add all the ingredients to the shaker if you like in place of floating the dark rum on top.