But now, as hot summer days turn to cool fall nights, we’d rather have a drink that lights a fire within us rather than squelching the sun without. Can we keep the rummy minty goodness of a Mojito, but rejigger it into something toasty? How about a warm cup of Mojijoe?

First, get all your ingredients:

I started with the sugar (2ish tbsp), mint (4-5 leaves), and just a squirt of lemon juice. I didn’t have a muddler handy, so I used the back of a spoon to mash it together just enough to bruise the tasty oils out of the mint leaves.

I added the rum (1.5 oz) next, then stirred and mashed a bit more. I used dark rum rather than the usual white; I thought it would compliment the coffee better.

Then the coffee. Then stir.

But um, I wouldn’t recommend the fancy glass. Oww, poor fingers. I guess mugs have handles for a reason. Also, the mint leaves kinda get in the way. So you may want to use one of these deals:

After all that, how’s it taste? Good! With the rum and mint, it’s very reminiscent of a crème de menthe-based dessert coffee, except the fresh mint has a more authentic taste and smell. It’s very rich; a whole mug may be too much. However, just a few sips were enough to have the intended warmth-in-the-belly effect.

The Mojijoe is going in the success category.

Apparently cassava looks like this:

Hmm. Not something I’d want to put near my tongue, but luckily it came all peeled and chopped up. Some Googling revealed that it’s a potato-like vegetable. Tapioca is made from processing it into flour. I also came across this tidbit:

Konzo is an epidemic paralytic disease. The outbreaks are associated with several weeks of almost exclusive consumption of insufficiently processed bitter cassava.

How can you resist a vegetable with its own paralytic disease?

As for how to prepare it, a friend on Twitter suggested this recipe for Vietnamese cassava cake. Hopefully making it into a cake would be “sufficient processing” to stave off the konzo.

The cake was … different. The cassava has a unique taste; kind of like potato, but with a bitter aftertaste that I attribute to the konzo-causing cyanide.

I couldn’t eat the whole thing though, so it was time to throw some in coffee.

I can definitely taste the cassava. That bitterness I mentioned seems to be accentuated by the coffee. However, this isn’t terrible. To be honest, I wasn’t a big fan of the cake, so this was a good excuse to plop some in coffee, take two sips, then toss it down the drain. Yet here I am, halfway through the mug, still drinking.

The caramel taste of the condensed milk is nice here (and would probably be great in coffee on its own). The texture is thicker than coffee, kinda powdery.

It’s getting even thicker as I get to the bottom. I can taste the poison bitterness more and more with each sip.

There’s a slight sludge at the bottom, but not enough to worry about. Bottoms up!

Oh god. Is that a tingling in my extremities?

Apparently Chia seeds are not only edible, but nutritious too.

The seeds come out as tiny dry pellets. Following the instructions for growing a Chia pet, I soaked them in water for about half an hour, after which they became a jelly-like mass.

Honestly, looking at it, this grossed me out more than a lot of other things I’ve tried here. Especially since the Chia pet they came with still haunts my nightmares.

But I had to try the stuff on its own before putting it in coffee (to make sure it follows the one rule). The gooey texture was a bit weird, and was followed by some crunchiness that reminded me of poppy seeds. The taste was slightly nutty with a hint of a fresh, citrusy flavour.

Definitely edible, so time to add it to coffee.

“Luckily,” the stuff floated instead of sinking to the bottom. It stayed as a solid mass at first, but with a little encouragement the seeds broke up and whatever chemical sludge holds them together dissolved into the coffee. Bottoms up.

You know, this is not as bad as I was fearing. Remember the drink Orbitz?

I’m reminded of that, or bubble tea. The solid bits add an odd sensation to each sip as they slip and slide down my throat, but don’t really affect the taste of the coffee. I feel some of them clinging onto and between my teeth, but hey, I was planning on flossing anyway.

All in all, I wouldn’t ch-ch-chow down on this every day, but it was a surprisingly enjoyable experiment.

Directions: Put a banana, sugar, and some chocolate powder in coffee. Blend.

The first few sips were not bad. Like a mocha with a bit of banana flavour in the background. I was surprised by how smoothly the banana blended into the coffee.

But it began to get thicker with every sip. After two or three minutes, it became apparent that something had gone horribly wrong. Soon, instead of sipping coffee, my lips hit a jelly-like mass.

It’s clear that some sort of curdling or condensing or something has gone on here. I couldn’t bring myself to drink any more. I carried the jiggling mess to the sink.

I’m very sorry to have to show you this, but you must be warned to never, ever put bananas in your coffee.

Banana mocha coffee may sound delicious, but seriously kids, just say no.

I just tried this idea, and my dad walked in and jokingly suggested I add jelly. So I did, and it was actually really good. It’s like a sandwich in your coffee. Highly recommended.

Why hadn’t I thought of it? PB & J go so well together in sandwiches, that there is no reason they can’t get it on in coffee as well.

So I took the condiments I had lying around.

Put them in one of the party cups for the Magic Bullet blender. With a bit of sweetener, but not too much; jam should already be sweet, right?

Some cream.

Put it all in a Magic Bullet (or other blender of your choice), blend it up, and you’re left with a lovely looking foamy drink.

Taste-wise, this is actually the weirdest coffee I’ve made so far. The peanut butter, now blended right in with the coffee due to the magic of the blender, hinted at great things. But the jam gave the whole thing a sour flavour; like the cream had gone bad … or curdled, which maybe it had. It’s possible that the rather bitter pomegranate jam I used wasn’t the best compliment to coffee. If I do this again, I’ll try something sweeter like that strawberry junk that’s loaded with sugar; maybe then I can share Meera’s enthusiasm.

The blender also failed to fully solve PWTIC’s persistent sludge-at-the-bottom problem:

Seeds and PB goo at the bottom. Oh my!

So hey, not quite a recommendation, but it’s got potential.

Other peanut butter sandwich combinations on the to-do list: peanut butter banana and peanut butter pickle.