RumChata Pumpkin Pie Martini Recipe

This started as a joke called I'm Officially Basic, which is what happens when you put pumpkin spice in a coupe in October. It is a pumpkin pie martini in name only, and so is the espresso martini it is built on: no gin, no vermouth, nothing about either one is a martini except the glass. What this actually is, is a shaken coffee drink with a cream liqueur doing the sweetening, and it holds a foam like one.

RumChata Pumpkin Spice does most of the work, which is the basic part and also the point. Underneath it, an ounce and a half of Appleton Signature keeps the drink from tasting like dessert on its own, because a Jamaican rum brings enough funk and molasses to stand behind all that cream. The half ounce of ginger syrup is the piece that matters most: pumpkin spice and cream turn cloying fast, and ginger is what cuts it. Shake harder than feels reasonable, since an espresso martini gets its foam from the crema and force is the only way to build it. For the rest of the fall menu, the black margarita is the Halloween end of it, and the Waffle House espresso martini is the same technique with a very different source of coffee. It sits in our Halloween cocktail roundup alongside the black margarita and six others.