Mardi Gras Skittles Rum

Though it won't be useful for this Mardi Gras (since it's over and all), this may be useful for an upcoming adult party that warrants colored beverages, as Skittles come in so many colors.

Backstory:  I don't really drink, so I haven't tasted this myself, but I decided to try this Pintrest project for three reasons:  (a) the IT guy at work had to put up with a lot of help requests from me because my Excel was acting up (and he DOES drink, as it sort of goes with the territory of dealing with unrealistic requests on impossible deadlines and flared tempers over the crippling effect computers can have when they don't work), (b) I was out of cookie dough to make him cookies (the wholesome, consumable thank you note) and (c) very large bags of Skittles were available in the subsidized vending machine in the breakroom at work.

The particulars:

I puchased 5 "share" sized bags of Skittles and sorted them by color.  I reserved the red and orange flavors since they allegedly taste like cough syrup, they are my husband's favorite, I thought I could use them for Valentine's Day (but didn't), and those aren't Mardi Gras colors anyway. They were delicious as movie snacks.

Assortments will vary, but I ended up with 90 purple, 114 yellow, and 118 green.  Not an exacting scientist, I put each color into its own glass and covered the candies with 250ml of otherwise-unflavored rum (for those who aren't interested in doing too much math, just split a normal size rum bottle in threes).

You can see the cloud of the candy shell dissolving from the yellow ones already.  A brief stir shortly after combining the candy and alcohol will release a cloud of color that would have been fun to photograph artistically, but I am not that handy with my camera yet.  In lieu an etherial shot of swirling color, below is what the candies looked like after just a few minutes...the green ones had been shaken a little bit.

The rest of the "work" is mostly waiting.  Give the Skittles at least one day, better TWO days to dissolve, shaking them every now and again to break up the clumps of Skittle mass.  They WILL dissolve completely.  There is no perishability to be concerned about, so you can leave these strewn about the house (though they are probably best kept together and explained a little to anyone you may happen to live with, in my limited experience) and not in the fridge.

Fun fact:  Skittles are gelatin-free!  The inner part of a Skittle is made of what works out to palm oil, so vegan friends who miss candy, Skittles may be an option!  I don't know if the whole project is vegan because I just assume that rum doesn't involve meat or dairy.

Focusing:  we must keep in mind the chewy center.  As much as we love the chewy center, the chewy center includes an ingredient that just won’t dissolve, and this part needs to be filtered away.  Per the suggestion of another online person giving a tutorial on the topic, paper towels work well for this task.  In my opinion, they were not stellar, but the issue is more what needs to be accomplished than the means by which one does it:  there is fat floating in there and fat clogs the pores of any filter.  The particles aren’t big enough to be caught by a regular strainer, so a towel or coffee filter *is* required.  I took a metal sieve, lined it with a doubled-up paper towel and poured in about half of a given color and busied myself with something else to do while it drained.  When nothing else wanted to come out, I twisted the top of the paper towel and squeezed it out.  Messy but effective.  I went through about 6 paper towels.

Once I got to my last color, I tried what I will call a “Chicken Stock Solution”:  I put it the unstrained mixture in the freezer for an hour (figuring the fat would congeal at the top and could be skimmed off, as you would do with fat on chicken stock) and tried filtering again.  This worked even worse than before.  Yes, the fat molecules clustered together and floated on the surface, but I could not pour around those clusters, and I created an even faster way to clog the filter right off the bat.  Don’t try THAT at home.

I don't know why I took so many pictures of the beginning of the process and none of the end, but that would have been cooler if I had used some fancy bottle in which to present them.  Instead, I just handed over the glasses to the IT guy, red lids and all.

The verdict:  the Skittle rum was "good but strong" and both colleagues who sampled it (and are hoarding it away from others?) said it was delicious diluted with bubbly lemon-lime soda.

Rating this project:
Time:  about an hour total hands on time:  20 minutes upfront to sort Skittles by color and put them in glasses with rum, 30-40 minutes carefully straining out the not-gelatin-but-certainly-not-desirable from the booze.
Difficulty:  other than the draining, this was easy, passive and effective.  It does require some special equipment (a metal sieve).

Overall, I would do this again for a party where color is important.  These would make for fun Skittles-tinis:  chill and pour, no shaker required.