Rumkin Spice Alexander Cocktail for Indulgent Holiday Drinking

Take the edge off your holidays with the Rumkin Spice Alexander. This pumpkin spice dessert cocktail is the perfect after-dinner drink to impress your guests, or an indulgent way to celebrate once they finally go home.

This HCC original cocktail is easy to make, but tastes as rich and complex as your favorite dessert. Pumpkin spice, rum, and cream create a crave-worthy holiday treat.

The Rumkin Spice Alexander won’t overpower your senses with too much pumpkin spice. The black rum and pumpkin flavors are well balanced. It tastes like a proper cocktail with a pumpkin spice flavor profile, rather than a spiked pumpkin spice milkshake.

Rumkin Spice Alexander Recipe

Detailed instructions and notes

This drink is easy to make, but first you need to make Pumpkin Spice Simple Syrup.

Since this drink has cream, you’ll definitely be shaking instead of stirring. Pour all the ingredients into your cocktail shaker and add cubed ice.

Don’t shake so much that you whip the cream. (And definitely don’t dry shake the cream without ice). You want the drink to be rich and creamy without becoming whipped cream. Shake long enough to get the drink really cold – about 20-30 seconds. This will chill the cocktail and create the creamy texture without overly aerating the drink.

I recommend double-straining this cocktail by pouring it through both your Hawthorne strainer and a fine mesh strainer, so there aren’t any tiny ice crystals in the serving glass. This will give the perfect texture.

Sprinkle a little pumpkin spice on top and enjoy!

How I created this cocktail

Once I perfected the recipe for pumpkin spice simple syrup, I began experimenting with cocktail recipes to showcase the pumpkin spice flavor.

I turned to the classic Alexander cocktail as a basis for the drink to create a creamy dessert drink for the holiday season. Knowing that I’d use heavy cream and pumpkin spice simple syrup, the first question was which base spirit to use.

I experimented with various whiskeys and rums, eventually discovering that Gosling’s Black Seal rum and pumpkin spice created flavor magic.

The next step was to dial in the proportions, so the drink has the right amount of pumpkin flavor without being too sweet or too creamy. This involved a lot of trial-and-error, so I mixed up small tasters in shot glasses to easily compare.

Making small tasters also saves money because you can compare a lot of variations without committing to full-size pours. The saltine crackers help to cleanse the palette between tastings.

After several nights of experimentation, I settled on this recipe for the Rumkin Spice Alexander.

Best rum for a Rumkin Spice Alexander

The best rum for the Rumkin Spice Alexander cocktail is Gosling’s Black Seal Rum. They’re not paying me to say that. The complex herbal and molasses flavors of the Black Seal compliment the pumpkin spice better than any other pairing I tried.

Bacardi Black is another alternative. I found this rum to be sweeter than Gosling’s, and definitely less herbal. If Bacardi Black is all you have in the liquor cabinet, you can still enjoy the Rumkin Spice Alexander.

Avoid spiced rum. I tried Kraken 94, which is my go-to spiced rum, and it just didn’t work. There were too many spices going on, and it tasted like a muddled mess. The delicate pumpkin flavor was lost among all the other flavors competing for attention.

I also tried gold and white rums, and they just didn’t have strong enough flavor to cut through the heavy cream.

I hope you enjoy the Rumkin Spice Alexander and happy holidays!