Back in my hedonistic days as the assistant manager of the Bath Hobgoblin pub my drink of choice was “double dark rum, diet coke and a straw”(shouted quickly and loudly over the sound of loud rock music). For some reason the straw was important, I forget why now, it was probably to help not spill it all over myself as I was generally quite drunk back then. White rum has never been my thing either, although the guys at the Eldorado Rum stand at last years BBC Good Food Show let me sample one that I really liked (perhaps the exception to my rule). Anyway, golden rum is my thing these days, its caramel flavours just bring out the best in a lime (and me). I’ve spent a lot of time in the Philippines where Tanduay rum is king. It used to be 30 pesos for a bottle of rum and 60 pesos for a can of coke (a beer was 15 pesos) so a rum and coke was 70% rum, 20% ice (also too expensive) and 10% coke. Even better the Tanduay rum bottles had a lid lottery so when you opened your big bottle of rum you would see on the inside of the lid what your prize would be, it was usually another bottle of rum!
Whenever I visit a food festival there are always lots of people selling toffee vodka, and it’s lovely (most of the time) but for me vodka has always been a spirit that you use to make other drinks/infusions with. Despite it being the straight drink of choice for every character in Eastenders (seriously WHY?) I would never choose to sip away on a plain vodka, and yet I use it in so many of my concoctions. Actually there was a brief phase when I was about 13-14 and living in Hong Kong where a karaoke bar used to do 2-4-1 double vodkas with lime cordial for $10 which we drank A LOT of which is probably why I’m not a fan of the spirit now.
So I figured I could easily combine my love for golden rum with toffee as the natural caramel flavours can only enhance the toffee right?
Ingredients:
- 70cl Golden Rum (I used Appletion Estate)
- 600g hard toffees (such as Werthers Original)
Just put your rum and toffees in a sterilised jar and leave for about 24 hours (stir every now and then to help the hard toffee dissolve). I used about 350ml rum and 1 x 200g bag of WO but it could have taken 2 bags easily for a sweeter version.
So there you go, it’s really easy and if you smash up the toffees before adding the rum then it will probably be ready in about 2 hours. Hell yeah!
It's Not F***ing Rocket Science 
I love werthers :d. This sounds really incredible. Rum is probably my favourite spirit too!
Rum is due for a big comeback, why don’t more people love it? Actually its probably down to awful drinks like Bacardi now I come to think of it!
Do you have to use golden rum? I live in Mauritius (full of sugarcane, hence cheap rum!) where a lot of restaurants make fruit-infused rum which they serve free as a post-meal drink, but they always use a particular brand of white rum. Would it still work?
I prefer to use golden rum as it’s natural toffee flavours and smoothness work best but it all depends on the quality of rum, you don’t want anything too harsh, sadly the white rums here in the UK are really very harsh and the golden ones smoother but if you can find a rum that is smooth enough to drink neat that it would be fine 🙂 I’m now massively jealous of your life in Mauritius and free fruit infused rum!
Hi Hazel – I tried making this – luckily, as I’m not a big fan of rum (just toffee!), I only made a glassful. In our lovely hot and humid climate, the cream in the toffee curdled! I ended up with a glass of brown rum full of white lumps! Gross! I’ll be trying again, but in the fridge this time! Smelt delicious though!
If you use hard toffees it should be fine, you need to keep shaking then the toffees will break down, if there are toffee lumps then the alcohol hasn’t finished working yet as it breaks everything down, but yes I’ve never made it in a hot climate but if worried you could always just use hard toffees that don’t contain any milk solids for a clearer tipple 🙂