Stonking Recipe Contained Within Part III (Tia Maria)

Member Name: jillmurphy

Product:	Tia Maria
Date:	21/08/02 (648 review reads)
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There's a lovely story attached to the origins of Tia Maria, all about Jamaica during the Colonial Wars, fleeing noblewomen, black pearl earrings and a secret family recipe. You can read it on their website (http://www.tiamaria.co.uk) if, like me, you like to know the folklore and stories behind the things that you buy. The website will also tell you how this famous liqueur is made and the process sounds equally romantic: coffee beans grown in the foothills of the Jamaican Blue Mountain range are gathered, cracked, and mixed with vanilla and sugar and alcohol then bottled and sold to those of us who love to savour a little bit of the taste and the atmosphere of a lazy Caribbean holiday whenever we can. Otherwise, I'm afraid, the website is a little dull with some rather unadventurous cocktail suggestions and a design in similar rich browns and reds which look so luxurious and desirable on the bottle but rather uninspiring on the web. Read the story and then come back to me, I've some much more interesting ideas for the consumption of Tia Maria I promise.

The most famous and, for me, the nicest of the coffee liqueurs, Tia Maria is a rich, dark brown, syrupy, aromatic delight best drunk alone, or on ice. Pour it slowly from the dark brown, square bottle, roll it around the glass and take a deep breath of freshly filtered coffee. Sip it and taste the thickened, velvet coffee with its fiery alcoholic kick and wait for the syrupy, vanilla sweetness to follow. It's heaven. Sit back, roll your glass around some more, sip again, take a while to contemplate the earthy reds and browns and golds of the bottle and let your mind wander away to sunnier climes and lazier days. It's more than a snifter: it's a taste; a smell; a hazy summer day; a break from the day. Mmm...

I prefer to drink Tia Maria neat or over ice and to do just that, to leave cares and worries behind and simply savour it slowly as time seems to slow. In m
y mind it goes perfectly with a room lit only by perfumed candles and some very good dark chocolate mints. I can't think what else you could need to begin, or even to end, a sensuous, sybaritic evening. The middle part is your choice, of course! But it's also great in that other self-indulgent situation: when added to some good strong coffee after a wonderfully huge meal cooked and eaten among the company and conversation of good friends. I prefer my alcoholic coffee black but if you're really in the Calypso mood then float some cream on the top. Many people drink Tia Maria with lemonade or cola (sacrilege I say!) and its a staple ingredient for the cocktail bartender. Take a search on the web and you'll find hundreds of recipes from which to choose. Just for you there are two Murphy recipes to follow, one including the obligatory chocolate from my confectioner of choice, the delectable Lindt:

For Bananas with Chocolate Tia Maria Sauce you will need...

* 4 bananas peeled and cut in half lengthways
* 250ml single cream
* half a bar Lindt Excellence plain chocolate
* 3 teaspoons instant coffee granules
* several (very good) slugs Tia Maria

Put the Lindt, the coffee and the cream into a bain marie (those bowls over pans of boiling water, you know) having broken the chocolate up into pieces first. Stir it around until it's all melted and then add your several (very good) slugs of Tia Maria and give an energetic stir so it's all properly smooth. Arrange your bananas on a plate and pour the sauce on the top. Then stuff the gorgeous, wonderful, gorgeous, gorgeous lot very quickly in case anyone sees you have it and wants to share!

And for Tia Maria Ice Cream you will need...

* about an egg cup (or two) full of filter or cafetiere coffee
* about an egg cup (or two) full of Tia Maria
* a drop or two of vanilla essence
* 175g icing sugar
* 500ml double cream

And all y
ou do is mix the the coffee, the Tia Maria and the vanilla essence into the icing sugar and then, using a blender, slowly mix in the double cream and whisk until you can see little peaks starting to form. Then all you do is whack the lot into a Tupperware box and shove it in the freezer for an hour or so. It makes a smooth, velvety, gorgeous ice cream easily good enough to impress the poshest of guests if you can stop yourself eating it all up before they arrive, and is a wonderful self-indulgent treat to accompany a night in with the video. Yumptious.

Tia Maria does not come cheap in more ways than one. It's not costly for a liqueur, but it will set you back more than a standard spirit does: tesco.com's price at the moment for a standard 70cl bottle is £13.88 and, if you're greedy like me, a 1 litre bottle weighs in at £18.96. You'll find it in every off licence near you for a few pennies more. It also packs an awesome alcoholic punch, coming in at 32.4% ABV and it really does not pay to drink too much for that awesome alcoholic punch delivers an equally awesome hangover punch the following morning. So don't be greedy. Tia Maria is a hedonistic drink made for luxury and savour, not for bingeing. You have been warned! However, it's one of my favourite tipples and there is generally a bottle sitting among the others in the Murphy alcohol store, it keeps wonderfully well in there too (for months and months in a dark, cool place), so to me is well worth the extra pennies over a bottle of boring old vodka.

Which way will you consume it first?

[With thanks to proxam whose opinion inspired me to try making the ice cream.]

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