Coconut Mango Couscous Salad (+ Ideas for a Tropical Fall Party Menu!)

This weekend, I invited a few of my favorite people over for a cozy and relaxed Fall lunch party at home. After a busy summer, it felt really great to finally relax and catch-up with friends over delicious food and drinks.

My party menu was inspired by a new product I've been working with this season called Dole Fruit n' Spice, which is a line of spiced frozen fruit that combines fruit like mangos, pineapple, and apples with spices like chili and cinnamon. It's a new product and I hadn't heard about it until I started working with them, but I'm genuinely obsessed with how good they are, and with all the ways you can use them to make both sweet and savory recipes.

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Top 10 Flavor Trends on Pinterest (+ delicious ways to eat them!)

I'm endlessly fascinated by the way food trends and flavors change from year to year, and even from month to month. As someone who is constantly cooking and experimenting, I love seeing how quickly new flavors and ingredients can go from super niche to practically ubiquitous.

I recently attended an event hosted by Pinterest at the Museum of Food and Drink here in New York where they announced their 2016 Pinsights Flavor Report--a round-up of trending flavors, ingredients, and pairings that are rocking everyone's worlds (and mouths!) right now.

Read on for those top ten flavor trends (plus some recipes to get you inspired to give each one a try!)

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The New Yorker (on Vacation) Cocktail

Last week, I had the privilege to spend a few days at the Grand Lucayan Resort on Grand Bahama Island as part of a culinary press trip.

This was my first time in Grand Bahama (and the Bahamas in general!), and I loved being able to explore and taste and experience a tiny bit of what that beautiful island has to offer.

I'll be sharing more about my trip soon, but I first wanted to share this special cocktail with you. On the third day of my trip, the other journalists and I were treated to a private island mixology class led by Prince, the resident bartender at Havana Cay--a gorgeous, cozy cocktail and Cuban cigar bar located on the resort.

Prince went through three of the most popular cocktails they serve on island, including the Bahama Mama (of course!), Goombay Smash, and the Hurricane.

He also talked about how one of his favorite things to do is create original cocktails for his guests. He asks them what they like, how they're feeling, and their favorite flavors, and then whips up a totally personalized specialty cocktail.

Hearing this, I knew I had to take advantage, and challenged him to make me a special drink. I requested a refreshing rum-based cocktail with sour citrus and tart flavors. He thought for a minute, then got to work behind the bar, adding a dash of this and a shot of that.

He shook it up, then served me a gorgeous bright pink drink you see right here.

I took a sip. It was wonderful!

He asked me what I thought, and asked for honest criticism, so I said that I'd actually love it to be even more sour, and recommended doubling the amount of lime juice while keeping all the other ratios the same.

Prince whipped it up again with my changes (mind you--everything was totally in his head without a single note taken!) and served it.

Perfection.

All the other ladies on the trip agreed it was a success, and he had us pick a name for the drink which he was now going to add to the bar menu.

We chose The New Yorker (on Vacation), after me (aka a New Yorker on vacation!).

I suggested serving it in a chic champagne flute with a twist of lime peel, then I took it outside to photograph.

The cocktail is now available on the menu at Havana Cay in the Grand Lucayan Resort.

If you visit and order it (and you should!), take a picture and be sure to share it with me!

And don't forget to tell Prince that I sent you! (He's a total sweetheart!)



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The New Yorker (on Vacation) Cocktail Recipe
Makes 2 cocktails

Ingredients
2 oz banana rum
2 oz gold rum
1 tablespoon mango rum
3 oz cranberry juice
1 teaspoon light brown sugar
1 1/2 large fresh limes, juiced
1 tablespoon fresh pineapple juice
1 teaspoon Sour Apple Pucker (or other sour apple schnapps)
Fresh lime peel cut into strips, for garnish

Directions

Fill a large cocktail shaker with ice and add all the ingredients except for the lime peel. Shake until the shaker is frosty, then strain into two flute glasses.

Garnish each with fresh lime peel and serve.

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From Scratch Rum Cake Recipe (Homemade Tortuga Rum Cake Copycat)

My recipe for Homemade Rum Cake started with a shopping spree at TJ Maxx. See...sometime back in November I made the mistake of buying a tiny box of Tortuga rum cake that I saw on sale at our nearby store. It looked tempting, so I brought it home and opened the box for a small taste of cake before dinner.

And it was incredible!

Eugene witnessed my minor freak-out as I raved over the moist, golden rum cake studded with a tiny sprinkle of crushed walnuts. Before I knew it, I had eaten the entire cake and was walking around the room with a happy buzz.

The next day after work, I returned to TJ Maxx and bought two more rum cakes--full-size this time. I proceeded to spend the next few weeks eating rum cake every night, returning to TJ Maxx regularly to replenish my supply. On one visit I finally realized that it would make more sense to just buy every cake they had left in stock (yes, this "made sense" to me)...so I did. I was so excited about the prospect of bringing home all these cakes that it didn't even occur to me to be embarrassed as I walked to the register with a tower of 8 rum cakes balanced in my arms.

"These are really, really good," I told the bemused cashier.

That was at the height of my wedding planning, and I credit a steady diet of nightly rum cake with helping me keep my sanity. (Miraculously, I still managed to lose quite a bit of weight pre-wedding; this may have to do with the fact that I was essentially replacing dinner with cake.)

When I got back in January, the first thing on my agenda was recreating this cake at home. I searched the Internet for recipes, but all the ones I found relied on a combination of boxed cake and pudding mixes.  I wanted to make rum cake from scratch, without bags of powdery substances. I finally found one recipe that was all from scratch except for the pudding mix (this, I’m sure you’ve guessed, is what led me to my recipe for homemade vanilla pudding mix). Not perfect, but definitely a start!

After a few trials and errors, I figured it out; I adjusted the original homemade rum cake recipe slightly, and then replaced the packaged pudding mix called for in the recipe with a cup of my own homemade pudding mix (essentially a combination of powdered milk and cornstarch). I pulled it from the oven, poured on the syrup, and waited anxiously until morning to see if it worked.

The results were brilliant!

The buttery rum syrup soaks evenly throughout the cake and leaves you with a moist, soft, golden cake speckled with flecks of vanilla bean. The texture of the cake is absolutely perfect—soft and springy without being spongy. Since the ingredients are all whole and from scratch, it lacks the artificial flavor undertones of the "semi-homemade" version.

The batter comes together easily, with not that much more effort than a cake mix, but the results are infinitely better.

The rum both in the cake and the syrup can be adjusted according to your tastes. If you’re trying to recreate the Tortuga cake (the one in those hexagonal yellow boxes found in the airports all along the Caribbean—and TJ Maxx), I recommend getting a bottle of Tortuga rum, which can be found in various places online.

You can also use infused or spiced rums such as Bacardi Coco or Captain Morgan’s, but I honestly prefer the simplicity and rich flavor of a good dark aged bottle (like Bacardi Anejo).

Want more Puerto Rican holiday recipes? Check out my eCookbook: The Puerto Rican Christmas Table with 40+ recipes and full-color photos. Click here to learn more!

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New to Always Order Dessert? Consider subscribing to my RSS feed, follow me on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook, or sign up to receive my once-a-week e-mail updates by filling in your address in the box on the right. And if you ever need any entertaining or cooking advice, please don't hesitate to e-mail me. Thanks for reading!

From Scratch Rum Cake Recipe (Tortuga Rum Cake Copycat)

Recipe by Alejandra Ramos | AlwaysOrderDessert.com

A recipe for homemade from-scratch rum cake made with no boxed mixes. Similar to Tortuga Rum Cake. The best from-scratch rum cake recipe!

5 stars

Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 55 minutes
Total time: 1 hour 5 minutes
Yield: 10 Servings

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup crushed walnuts
• 1 1/2 cups granulated white sugar
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 3 tablespoons + 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup cornstarch
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 cup DIY Vanilla Pudding Mix (Click here for my easy pudding mix recipe or substitute one 3.4oz box of store bought pudding mix)
• 3/4 cup whole milk
• 4 large eggs
• 3/4 cup dark rum
• 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

For the Rum Syrup:

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup water
• 3/4 cup granulated white sugar
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 cup dark rum 

Directions 
1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease and flour a bundt pan, and drop crushed walnuts into the bottom of the pan. Set aside.

2. In the base of a mixer, cream the 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar and the 1/2 cup butter. Add the 3 tablespoons oil, flour, cornstarch, baking powder, and kosher salt combining until evenly distributed. (Mixture will look like fine crumbs.) Mix in the pudding mix.

3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, rum, vanilla extract, and remaining vegetable oil. Add to the dry mixture and mix well until combined. The batter will be smooth, thin, and pour easily.

4. Pour into the prepared bundt pan and bake for 50 to 60 minutes, or until a tester inserted in the cake comes up clean.

5. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes, then invert onto a rack. Let cool for 20 to 30 minutes.

6. While the cake cools, prepare the rum syrup: In a large saucepan with high sides, combine the butter, water, granulated sugar, and salt. Cook over medium heat until the butter completely melts and the sugar dissolves. Let reduce slightly, keeping an eye on it so it doesn’t boil over. Remove from the heat and stir in the rum (it will bubble).

7. Wash and dry the bundt pan, then place over the cool cake and invert the cake back into the pan. Pour the hot rum syrup all over the cake and let soak for 8 hours (overnight). In morning, invert the cake back onto a serving platter.

Keeps covered for 1 week at room temperature.

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Passion Fruit Sorbet (& an announcement!)

The morning after we got back from vacation (which, I admit is now officially about 3 weeks ago), Eugene decided to run out to the store to pick up a few supplies for the weekend.

"Make me a list," he said, as he hopped around trying to put on a sock.

I grabbed my BlackBerry and wrote him a list of things I figured we'd need: eggs, buttermilk (for pancakes), turkey ham, salad greens, whole wheat bread, calamine lotion (for my UV rash), lemons, frozen passion fruit puree, and "anything else that looks good." I sent it to his e-mail and he glanced at it before leaving.

"Calamine lotion?"

"Just check if they have it!" I whined, scratching my incredibly itchy arms.

"And frozen passion fruit?"

"Yeah, it should be in the freezer with all the Spanish stuff." (::scratch scratch::)

He looked at me uncertainly, but grabbed the keys and headed out.

About 30 minutes later, he was back with two heavy bags. "They didn't have calamine lotion," he said as he dropped them on the floor in the kitchen.

"And what about the passion fruit?" I asked, scared to get my hopes up.

"Oh yeah," he said. "They had that. I got two different brands since I didn't know which you'd like."

At this, I quite literally jumped up with joy. "Oh BOY!!! Oh BOY! This is fantastic!"


I dug around in the bags until I found the two flat frozen packages of golden pulp. As anyone who has ever strained fresh passion fruit pulp from the fruit by the teaspoon can attest, having actual cups and cups (and cups!) of the stuff makes one feel very, very rich.

Coming home from vacation absolutely sucks. I mean there are just no other words to describe how terrible it feels to come back from a blissful week on a perfect little hot and sunny island to the melting sludge and biting wind of late winter in New York City.

But, I've learned that a healthy supply of tart and creamy passion fruit sorbet really does helps a lot. One spoonful (ok...ok...about 7 spoonfuls) of this sorbet eaten straight out of the ice cream maker, and I felt like I'd been whisked back to sunny Vieques (minus the security lines and the terrifying puddle jumper flight).

This sorbet could not be easier to make, and scoops up absolutely beautifully. It's also very affordable. About two dollars for the passion fruit puree, plus the water and sugar that you probably already have at home, will give you 4-5 cups of sorbet. Compare that with the $5 Ciao Bella and Whole Foods and everyone else charges for their tiny pints, and you've got some major savings.

So major in fact that I have no plans of EVER buying those tiny pints again! (I actually announced these intentions on Twitter the other day, much to the chagrin of the Ciao Bella twitter person who tried to convince me otherwise.)

Speaking of passion...

Most of you have already heard me blabbing on and on about this on Twitter and Facebook but in case you haven't, we have some news. Eugene and I are super happy to announce that we're engaged!!!

Awesome, huh? Eugene asked me to marry him on a Wednesday a few weeks ago under a star-filled evening sky in Vieques. It was beautiful and romantic (and actually quite funny as there was a nosy--albeit adorable--English sheepdog named Zach who absolutely insisted on sticking his face in Eugene's as he was down on his knee proposing).

Like most girls, I'd daydreamed and wondered about this moment for years, and was thrilled when it finally happened. Since then, we've been very silly and giddy about the whole thing; I have a little dance that I like to do every now and then, and we love calling each other fiance and fiancee--it doesn't get old!

You know how much I love to plan parties, so I can imagine you know how excited I am to plan our wedding and (even more importantly!) our new life together. I've only just started thinking about things and we haven't set a date yet, but we do know three things for sure. It will definitely be next winter. It will definitely be in New York. And I will DEFINITELY be making my own cake.

I plan to document the planning and ideas here (and am also open to suggestions and recommendations!), so I hope you won't mind listening in. I promise I won't go all 24/7 wedding blog on you though...that's just so not my style. ;)

Anyway darlings, wish me luck! And in the meantime...I hope you enjoy this delicious sorbet!

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Loved this recipe? Here are three other passion fruit recipes you might like:

• Passion Fruit Pate de Fruit Candy
• Easy Passion Fruit Lemonade
• Passion Fruit Curd

And let's connect so you can find out the next time I post! Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, or Pinterest, become a fan on Facebook, or sign up to receive my once-a-week e-mail updates.

Thanks so much for reading! 


Yup! That's the ring! ;)

Passion Fruit Sorbet
Makes 4 1/2 cups

1 and 3/4 cups granulated sugar
2 cups water
2 1/2 cups frozen passion fruit puree, defrosted.

In a small saucepan, combine sugar and water and bring to a boil stirring until sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat and let cool completely.

Add in passion fruit puree and combine well. Pour into the base of your ice cream machine and freeze according to manufacturer's instructions. Transfer to an air-tight container and freeze for an additional 4 hours (or overnight) before serving.

Store in air-tight container in the freezer for up to 2 weeks.

Ingredient Note: Frozen Passion Fruit puree can be usually be found in the freezer section of most major grocery stores or latin markets, sometimes labeled by its Spanish name "Maracuya" or "Parcha." Goya and La Fe are two major manufacturers and a package typically sells for 2-3 dollars.

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