How to Make French Quarter Flaming Café Brûlot
Festive New Orleans After-Dinner Coffee Drink Recipe
Sep 1, 2008
The devil tempts in many disguises. This same coffee drink is variously called café diablo, café diabolique or devil's coffee. Brûlot in French means either spicy or incendiary. In this case it is both.
This drink might just have its roots in the Spanish Inquisition! This devil's brew has been attributed to Dominique Youx, said to be elder brother and top lieutenant to the pirate, Jean Lafitte (Jean preferred the term privateer).
More likely is the claim that Jules Alciatore, the son of the founder of Antoine's restaurant in New Orleans, created Café Brûlot Diabolique in the 1890s.
Whatever the origin, the drink later became a popular way to disguise alcohol during Prohibition.
Every household in early New Orleans had its brûlot bowl on the buffet and often special ladles and cups . A brûlot bowl is any, traditionally silver or copper, that can be heated with sterno or candle flames from the bottom. A chafing dish and a metal ladle will serve as well and demitasse cups are perfect.
Café Brûlot
You will need: a brûlot bowl or a chafing dish, demitasse cups (or better yet, brûlot cups, which are available on Amazon).
- 1 orange, peel removed
- 1 lemon, peel removed
- 6 whole cloves
- 3 sugar cubes
- 2-inch cinnamon stick
- 1 cup brandy, cognac or rum
- 1/2 cup Gran Marnier, triple sec, curacao, cointreau or other orange liqueur
- 2 cups fresh strong black coffee (with chicory if you want it more authentic)
- Over your brûlot bowl or chafing dish, peel lemon in one continuous motion so that the peel is a long spiral, making sure to avoid the bitter white pithy part of the rind. Any juice from the lemon should fall directly into the bowl. Peel orange in the same fashion.
- Insert cloves into the orange and lemon peels at one inch intervals. Place sugar cubes cinnamon stick, brandy and orange liqueur into the brûlot bowl, and stir to dissolve the sugar.
- Light the burner under a brûlot bowl and adjust the flame to low. When the mixture is warm, carefully ignite using a kitchen match.
- To recreate the show at Antoine's, hold the orange spiral above the bowl with tongs and ladle the flaming liquors over it to drip back into the bowl.
- While the mixture is still flaming, announce to your guests that the secret to the potion is "magic voodoo dust," at which point sprinkle some ground cinnamon into the flames. These will sparkle in the blue alcohol flame.
- Continue stirring until the flame dies out, holding the lemon and orange peels in the heat to infuse the flavor.
- Stirring gently, pour the coffee into the bowl in a slow, thin stream around the edges of the bowl so that the sizzling sound may be heard.
- Optionally you may squeeze a small amount of orange and lemon juice into the bowl to naturally sweeten the coffee.
- Ladle hot brûlot into hot demi-tasse cups. The ladles custom-made for brûlot have strainers built in. Failing that, you may wish to ladle the mixture through a small strainer.
For the four or five tips that make the difference in making really great coffee, check out How to Make Great Coffee.
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