“This is a Goron problem!” - Darunia, Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Inspiration

Death Mountain, the home of the Gorons is present in a number of Zelda titles. In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time it’s a hot-cored volcano where Dodongo’s Cavern and the Fire Temple are located. In developing this cocktail recipe, I took inspiration from the mountain’s local inhabitants. If they had a local drink, wouldn’t it use the local delicacies? How can we capture the aesthetic of a place brimming with glowing rivers of molten rock? This recipe uses the delectable flavor combination of chocolate and strawberry and portrays a hot rock gradient. A liquid red layer of dark rum cocktail and pebble ice floats above a lower layer of hard chocolate jelly candies. The candy rocks soak in the liquid above as the sipper approaches the drink’s core where the sweet finish awaits.

Workshopping

Edible Rocks

The inhabitants of Death Mountain, the Gorons, eat rocks. This got me thinking, can I also eat rocks? My mind first thought of making some rock candy and using it as a garnish either in the drink or on the rim of the glass. I’m personally not a fan of rock candy, so I searched for something different I could use. While at the TASTE! Philadelphia Food Festival during October 2022, I stopped by the booth of a maid cafe (At Your Service in Harrisburg PA) that was selling these small candies called Kohakutou. The snack, of Japanese origin, uses agar-agar to create a jelly that, when exposed to air, becomes crunchy on the outside while leaving the inside soft and crumbly. Now if I were to eat like a Goron, this would be the way to go!

The concept was rather simple, create some chocolate Kohakutou, and figure out how to use it in a drink. Two steps: easy, right? Well, it actually took a few recipes to get this chocolate Kohakutou thing just right. It also took a few days to let it settle for the right texture. I first tried using some Hershey’s chocolate syrup, water, sugar, and various ratios of agar agar, but nothing solidified. My guess is the syrup was too thick! Swapping out with cocoa powder completely turned things around! Here’s the recipe I used from user HANSE over on YouTube

• 5 g Cocoa Powder

• 4 g Agar Agar Powder

• 190 ml Water

• 250 g Sugar

• Allow the ingredients above to come to a light boil, then cool in the fridge overnight.

• After the mix becomes hard and jello-like I cut it into cubes and let sit out in the air. It took about 3 days for things to harden to my preferences.

This recipe was exactly what we needed! It was chocolatey, easy to eat, and crunchy. Food fit for a Goron!

Death Mountain by Chocolate

I don’t know about you, but I’d kill for chocolate strawberries. I went with fresh strawberry syrup to represent the flowing magma that fills Death Mountain from the inside (because it’s a volcano). I believe I made the strawberry syrup by measuring equal parts sliced strawberries and sugar, macerating them, and filtering out the solids. For the chocolate side of things, creme de cacao and chocolate bitters were mixed with rum to stand up to the prominent strawberry flavor. I tried the recipe both with white rum (Bacardi) and dark rum (Myers’s) and found that the darker flavors of caramel and molasses in the dark rum melded best.

Shaking all this with a bit of tart lime juice to balance out the sweetness worked great! Pouring this out over the Kohakutou and pebble ice made this most amazing-looking gradient. It shocked me how the light in the photoshoot just made this whole drink glow. I was kind of impressed. This was likely my favorite drink made for the Ocarina of Time playthrough.

Flavor Analysis

The tart flavor of strawberry mingles with molasses-forward rum. A few sips more and the subtle taste of bittersweet chocolate parts through with that lingering sweetness reminiscent of the initial strawberry. Further down as you sip, the taste of chocolate grows until a collection of firm jelly candy awaits for dessert.