Looking for the perfect holiday drink? Meet Coquito, Puerto Rico’s creamy, coconut-infused answer to eggnog—and the recipe comes straight from Nick Mautone, the mixology mastermind behind the $10 million Honey Deuce cocktail at the U.S. Open.
When asked what makes the Coquito so special, Nick said, “You almost can’t screw it up. It’s rich, indulgent, and full of those sweet holiday spices that make everything feel festive.”
Nick’s take on Coquito skips the evaporated milk for more coconut richness, blending coconut milk, sweetened condensed milk, dark rum, and a dash of warm spices.
Shake it up in a cocktail shaker, serve it chilled, and garnish with nutmeg or a cinnamon stick for the perfect holiday toast. Whether you sip it in a martini glass or over ice, it’s a little taste of the tropics with a festive twist.
This recipe is easy-peasy, even for the directionally challenged (yes, I’ve been known to rescue instructions from the trash one too many times). So grab a shaker, channel your inner Tom Cruise, and toast to the holiday season!
Here’s Nick Mautone’s Holiday Coquito Recipe!
Holiday Coquito By Nick Mautone
Coquito is an eggnog-like alcoholic beverage, but without eggs! A traditional Puerto Rican holiday drink it is creamy, decadent and filled with sweet spices like cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, allspice and ginger. The key ingredients are coconut milk or cream of coconut and condensed milk. Many home recipes include evaporated milk, I skip that in favor of more coconut milk and its exotic flavor. If you want to go completely dairy free (I often do!) there is sweetened condensed coconut milk available online and in specialty markets, or use coconut cream instead of condensed milk – just be sure to mix it well.
2 oz coconut milk
1 ½ oz Dark rum
1 oz sweetened condensed milk
Generous Dash of apple or pumpkin pie spice or your favorite blend of sweet spices like cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, allspice and ginger
Garnish: Grated Nutmeg and/or Cinnamon Sticks and/or Coconut
Glassware: Shot Glass, Martini up or Rocks glass over ice
Pour all ingredients into a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Shake vigorously, strain into preferred glass or rocks glass filled with ice. Garnish
Pro tip 1
Adding a dash of another brown spirit such as bourbon, brandy or a sweet sherry will add a real depth of flavor and complexity.
Pro tip 2
Multiply this recipe by 10 or more and stash in the fridge. It will last a week or so, ready for all your holiday entertainment.
Pro tip 3
Add a tablespoon of pumpkin purée to the recipe for a very decadent pumpkin pie “nog”
Pro tip 4
Add a tablespoon of apple butter to the recipe for a very decadent apple pie “nog”
Pro tip 5
Add a ½ ounce of peppermint schnapps or white crème de menthe to the original recipe for a very decadent peppermint bark like version.
Enjoy this podcast of my warm conversation with childhood neighbor and cocktail star Nick Mautone live on The Debbie Nigro Show. If you’d rather read than listen, the transcript of the audio is below.
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And now, back to the Debbie Nigro Show!
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Fill the fire and gather round the tree. Fill it last and maybe come and sing with me. You know, you have to try and get into the holiday spirit, even if it’s not coming naturally to you, but by listening to songs like this and, you know, throwing on a holiday movie
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0:00:39
like I did, like, oh, come on, Debbie, let’s step it up or just you know just appreciating the word Mary in the middle of all the madness that we live here on this planet would be a kind of nice thing to do for yourself and others hi everybody I’m Debbie Nigro so yeah I’m in the holiday spirit I read this article the coquito is crowned as the holiday favorite drink in New York New Jersey I connect I’m like oh the coquito it’s an interesting idea I think I’m
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0:01:14
gonna try and make this. And it looks like an eggnog-y thing. I’m like, I have no idea how to make this. So I remembered I knew a guy, like not just any guy, like the guy who makes cocktail recipes. And I invited him on the show today. Nick Mautone is back with us. He’s the guy who invented that $10 million Honeydews cocktail for the U.S. Open. And he’s checking in from, I think he’s in Florida, even though he lives in Seattle.
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Hey, Nick. Hi, Debbie. Happy holidays to everyone. Happy holidays Nick. I happened to mention like in passing that you got hit by a car since the last time I talked to you which is like nothing small and that you were really really struggling there and I’m so sorry to hear what you’re going through and that for like six months you really can’t do anything but talk so I invited you to talk because I wanted to
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give you some love. Well and it’s it’s making me extremely happy because I am feeling a million times better than I was when we emailed a few weeks ago and I’m walking without crutches and I’ll be back up and around in a couple of months. So life is going in the right direction.
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Thank you. Oh, you’re welcome. Yeah, that was bizarre. You were walking your dog and got hit by a car. Like I don’t think that’s anybody sees that one coming.
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You don’t see that one coming. And I tell people it was a beautiful, sunny day, first thing in the morning, so it wasn’t like I was in the shadows on a dark road
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or anything like that.
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And poor woman who hit me, honestly, she just didn’t see me. It was just going around a curve and she just didn’t see me. She was beside herself. So, you know, everything’s okay.
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That’s all I care about. Everything’s okay and I’m heading in the right direction. Yeah, you’ve been through a lot.
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How’s your dog? My dog is phenomenal.
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He’s still trying to figure out like, what’s up? Dad hasn’t walked me in three months. What’s going on? Yeah, when I saw you in a wheelchair showing your son how to do the holiday for the first time in 30 years in your Facebook picture, I was like, oh, this is really serious. And your son did great though, right?
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He did great.
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He did great.
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It was funny showing him how to break down a turkey because it’s not that easy.
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It’s not that easy. It’s not that easy. It’s not that easy.
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I think it’s a great way to start a conversation.
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I think it’s a great way to start a conversation. I think it’s a great way to start a conversation. was your mother. Nick and I were neighbor friends as kids and we came from big Italian households with a lot of food and food was love and it’s like why would you bother learning because they do it so perfect so you got to go out and see boys and girls and whatever and do your
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thing, come back the food is yours, you’ll clean up, right? That’s what I did. But anyway, yes, you learned a lot about food and love and so that’s why I invited you to give me your coquito recipe because I know it’s the number one recipe. It’s a Puerto Rican holiday drink with a lot of coconut infusion, unlike eggnog. What’s so different about coquito and eggnog?
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0:04:10
The main difference is a coquito I call a nog, but it is not eggnog because it doesn’t have any eggs in it. A true eggnog is what you often call a custard base. In the old days, they didn’t cook it, but most people today, if they’re making a true eggnog will gently simmer the milk and the spices and the sugar and the eggs or egg yolks depending on how they make it just so that the eggs are pasteurized and they thicken up a little bit and you chill
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that down and you add your mixture of rum or brandy or bourbon or any combination that you like.
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0:04:48
You can put any kind of liquor in it?
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0:04:52
That’s right. In an eggnog. You know, traditionally people have put rum and brandy, but you find people who put a combination of it, of what they like in it. Usually it’s a brown spirit, a very strong brown spirit. Like you wouldn’t put gin or tequila in an eggnog.
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It just doesn’t work.
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No. You know, Nick, I was just saying that eggnog, like nobody thinks about it the rest of the year and all of a sudden like everybody’s selling eggnog, buying eggnog and then even with like brandy, like nobody thinks about brandy until they have to put it in an eggnog. Like how do these people stay in business?
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Well I think it comes down to they know it’s a seasonal product. So they’re not making it all year or maybe there’s some on the shelf because it is, you know, you can have shelf stable versions, you have stuff that are in the freezer, you can have stuff that’s refrigerated. But I think they just, it’s almost like the turkeys. You know what I mean?
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You raise them through the year and then you sell them, you sell the majority of them at Thanksgiving and Christmas. I think it’s the same thing with eggnog. You have the ingredients, they’re made by various dairies and whatnot, the supermarket versions, if you will,
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and they make them around the holidays and they last for many months thereafter. At home, you know what I’m noticing? And I was at an event in my hometown last Christmas, people selling, sort of think of it as a holiday fair, and there was this local group of women
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who made their own version of a Bailey’s Irish cream liqueur. It wasn’t Irish whiskey, it was something else. And when I got to talking with them, it enlightened me a little bit that a lot of these cream-based liqueurs are really more popular than they’ve ever been. It kind of surprised me, I haven’t looked up the numbers or the stats. So flowing into our coquito recipe and our eggnog recipe, I think there’s a love out there of these decadent creamy drinks. I, for one, am a fan. So like I think I mentioned that when we first emailed.
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I am a fan. I love these creamy vegetarian drinks. And frankly, the older mixologists, the people in the generation before me, if you will, cream-based drinks were extremely popular. If you go back into old recipes, it’s like a white Russian, right? Think of the dude and the white Russian, cream and Kahlua and whatever.
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I remember a lot of nights when I drink those white Russians.
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Exactly. If you look back historically, a lot of their drinks are classic drink with cream called a Tom and Jerry, which is kind of like an eggnog without the egg, but you shake it up in a drink and people would love it.
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That’s so funny.
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So it kind of got out of favor and I think they’re coming back in favor because they recognize especially with the coquito, it’s a little on the exotic side because it’s from Puerto Rico.
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Yes, it’s very Caribbean. Very Caribbean. Very Caribbean.
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It’s got a lot of flavor, exotic with the coconut milk and the sweet spices and there’s so many ways you can do it. You almost can’t screw it up.
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Okay, so let me, you almost can’t screw it up, which is really good for someone like me. It’s like, what did you say again? You know what I can’t believe that I do, and I’m sure a lot of people do this and don’t admit it. Like, I’ll read directions that have like three instructions, throw the package in the garbage bag, pal, and then take it out again and read it again.
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And then I’ll put it back in the garbage and just take it out one more time. It’s like three instructions, you know, Nick, it’s not right. So anyway, this is a very simple recipe. Very generous of you for sharing this. I’m very honored and my audience is honored. And this is the coquito recipe, the holiday coquito recipe, which is a traditional Puerto
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Rican Christmas drink and everybody loves it and Nick Morton has shared the recipe. You want to just tell us what it is?
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Sure. Okay. My version is just slightly different than the classic. A classic drink is usually a mixture of coconut milk, evaporated milk and sweetened condensed milk along with rum and spices. I don’t bother with the evaporated milk.
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0:09:05
Not that I don’t like it, it’s great to bake with and cook with but I prefer a little more richness from the coconut, a little more of the rich coconut flavor. That’s just my personal preference. Okay. So I take for one drink, I take two ounces of coconut milk, one ounce of sweetened condensed milk, one and a half ounces of dark rum, and then a generous dash of whether you use apple pie spice or pumpkin pie spice or your own blend of spices like cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, allspice, and ginger. You can put anything you want in there.
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0:09:35
Cool. As long as it’s like those sweet holiday spices.
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Yeah.
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You put it all in a cocktail shaker, add some ice, shake it up, get it nice and frothy and cold and then in Puerto Rico, they traditionally serve it in a shot glass after dinner. You have it in a shot glass and you have a sip or two or down it if you will and then you have another one. I think I prefer it either in a martini glass up as a dessert drink or better yet in a rocks glass with some ice and I garnish it with some grated nutmeg and a cinnamon stick. And that’s my personal preference. But there’s lots of ways you can make it or adapt it to your personal taste as well.
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You had me at cocktail shaker. I tell you, Nick, that just made me so happy to envision me making these things and doing that and being like Tom Cruise. Nick Mautone, everybody was thrilled you’re going to join us again today. How are they going to find you to follow you? You’re the coolest. What is your website? Oh, you knocked them off there by accident? It’s alright. Everybody knows. I’ll put everything up on the Debbie Nigro Show Facebook page. But anyway, it’s just Nick Mautone at Mautone. You can see what he does at mautone-enterprises.com.
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But Google Nick Mautone. On Instagram it’s at Nick Mautone. M-A-U-T-O-N-E. Alright, thanks. We’ll be back in just a moment here on the Debbie Nigro Show.
Transcribed with Cockatoo
