You gotta love it when the holidays lend themselves so easily to a cocktail, right?

March 2 is Banana Cream Pie Day and I’m having trouble coming up with any objections to such a day existing. Banana pies and banana cream custards go back to the late-1800s, but the first written record specifically for the banana cream pie is found in 1906, courtesy of The Blue Ribbon Cook Book. Every pie maven surely has their own version of the pie these days, a favorite for pot lucks and spring holidays, and there are plenty of cocktail versions around, too.

Of course, I wanted to play around and come up with my own.

Banana Cream-Tini

2 oz Coconut Milk
1 oz Banana Liqueur
3/4 oz Vanilla Vodka
1/4 oz Butterscotch Schnapps

Combine all ingredients over ice and shake until rich and frothy. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and enjoy.

We’ve been using a lot of coconut milk in our house, lately, and had a hunch that it would give this drink a richer feel and flavor than regular milk without being as cloying as sweetened condensed milk or even Irish Cream would have been. My hunch proved correct and this is a delightful twist on the original. The coconut milk makes for a very opaque cocktail, of course, so this is a perfect candidate for serving in something decorative.

Garnish for a cocktail like this is tough. Banana would be the obvious choice but there’s little more unappealing (!) than a browning banana slice resting on the rim of your glass. While most banana cream pies are poured into a standard pastry crust that have been baked blind (unfilled), I suppose you could take a half-step to the left and rim your glass with graham cracker crumbs. Some demerara sugar might make a nice rim, too, come to think of it.

Bottom line, making a banana cream pie takes some effort. This cocktail? All the flavor and less than a minute of real work.

Not such a tough decision, is it?

Cheers!