Here is how those plans got derailed.

Assplosion was a lovely gift from my family. It’s not a great hot sauce; it’s spicy enough, but hadn’t really lived up to its name. Still, I had to try it first, to start this series with a “bang.”

The only coffee I had ready was chocolate-hazelnut flavoured. And you know how chocolate with chili in it is all the rage these days? I thought I’d enhance the chocolate with some Fry’s cocoa and go for that idea in drink form.

I’ve been watching Dexter a lot lately, which makes red drips remind me of blood. That was probably the first sign this wouldn’t turn out well.

When it was all mixed up, the smell was … alarming. It literally hurt my nose a bit, with the combination of bitter cocoa and noxious spice. Ah, but I had to try tasting it anyway. For you, dear reader. All for you.

All I could taste was the Assplosion. I only put a few drops in, but it overwhelmed the coffee, hazelnut, and chocolate such that all they did was add some bitterness and enhance the illusion that I was drinking poison. Or ass.

I want to give other hot sauces a chance. Maybe it’d be better with regular coffee and no chocolate. Maybe there is a sauce out there that can contribute to the pleasant coffee / spice balance I experienced with curry coffee. But I can’t bring myself to try any more; not any time soon.

Plus, I’m starting to feel a rumbling down below.

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.

Since then, the community has banded together, offering suggestions that could prevent this tragedy from ever happening again. Many people suggested that temperature was a key factor. So let’s just chill out and try a few new techniques.

Frozen Tim Tam with Hot Coffee:

Freezing a regular Tim Tam overnight was a definite improvement. Suckage increased by at least 1 or 2 sucks, so that a decent amount of Tim Tam flavoured coffee could be extracted before it all fell apart. Even after its messy death, some particularly cold spots remained intact.

Frozen Caramel Tim Tam with Iced Coffee:

Just biting off the corners, it was clear that there were some solid bits in the frozen caramel Tim Tam.

Oh wow, so many sucks! This biscuit refuses to go mushy. I hoovered 5 or 6 good squirts of coffee, and even after that it didn’t crumble, but just lost its ability to transport liquid.

Biting into it was not tooth-friendly. A solid skeleton of jagged caramel had kept the whole thing together, and the cold coffee had done nothing to soften it.

Using the frozen caramel kind and sucking up cold coffee is the best way to delay the senseless murder of Tim Tams.

The Tim Tam Slam is the practice of drinking a hot beverage, e.g. hot chocolate, through a Tim Tam (a commercial biscuit).

Hey, coffee is a hot beverage!

Tim Tams are Australian, so I wasn’t sure I’d be able to find them. Thankfully, they seem to be as ubiquitous as Fosters’s, so I found them at a larger Canadian grocery store.

They had two kinds, regular and caramel, so obviously I got both. To prepare for the Tim Tam slam, you bite off opposite corners.

Then you dunk one end in the coffee and, quickly, clamp your mouth around other end and suck like you’ve never sucked before. The tricky part of this process—and probably the reason it’s called the Tim Tam Slam rather than the Tim Tam Leisurely Suckle—is that the whole thing immediately begins to disintegrate when the coffee hits it. You really only get one good suck in before it’s mush in your hands.

The caramel kind was harder to hoover through, but lasted a bit longer. Maybe a suck and a half. Plus the ribbon of caramel acts like a skeleton to keep the whole thing intact even after the slam, making it easier to eat.

So the whole experience doesn’t last long, but while it does, it is a sweet one. The coffee picks up chocolate and liquified biscuit as it travels, arriving in your mouth with burst of sugary goodness.

The rest of it often plops into the coffee unless you can catch it in time. This gives the coffee itself a very nice mocha flavour, and even the soggy bits at the bottom are not half bad. They can be spooned out for a tiramisu-type treat.

Just be sure to wash your hands before attempting this. You’re going to end up licking them, and you wouldn’t want them pre-flavoured with Cheeto dust and whatever other filth you usually have coating your grubby flesh mittens. Might wanna have a napkin nearby too. Especially if you plan on writing a blog post about it and don’t want your keyboard all sticky. Oops.

Anyway, I highly recommend this messy success. Tim Tams and coffee are a match made in Australia heaven.

Note: Sorry for the blurry pictures. I was forced to use my iPhone 3GS, since I can’t even afford an iPhone 4. Oh hey, look, you can buy merchandise over to the right there!

I still had some bread cheese left. I’d heard it’s good with brown sugar and cinnamon baked on. I had the brilliant idea of topping coffee with a layer of the cheese, topping that with cinnamon and sugar, broiling it in the oven, then having a lovely crust to sip the coffee through, giving it just a hint of the cheesey brilliance before finishing it off with a soon.

I soon realized that there was not a large enough slice of cheese left to cover the whole ramekin (yes that’s a real word; look it up), and it wouldn’t be much of a “crust” if it immediately sank to the bottom. Thus, I drafted up and implemented a complex cheese apparatus, with smaller bits of cheese acting as supports to keep the larger slice aloft.

Of course, now is when this cheese finally decides to get its melt on. It immediately collapsed to the bottom of the coffee.

Regardless of its structure, it smelled delicious. But, well, you put anything with cinnamon in an oven, and it’s going to smell great. Luckily, this lived up to its smell. I had to use a spoon, treating it more like soup than coffee, but oh what gooey goodness.

This reminded me a lot of French Onion soup, in texture and even in taste; it’s a bit less salty, more sweet, but it’s got that delightful soggy melted cheese flavour that the French refer to as merde fondu dans ma bouche.¹

People with less adventurous pallets would probably be turned off by this unusual combination of flavours. But when you think about it, coffee, cheese, and cinnamon all have an earthy quality to them. In fact, next time I do this, I’ll leave out the sugar and add some cognac, further emphasizing that this works better as a soup than a dessert coffee.

All of these bread cheese experiments have been successful. I give it my serious recommendation. If juustoleipa isn’t available where you live (as it isn’t here), I’m sure other cheeses could be substituted. Swiss, Gruyere or emmenthal could have similar results. And as we saw, cheddar has its place in coffee.

Thanks again to Monica Wright for the bread cheese and continual awesomeness. And thanks to you, Internet, for your incoming suggestions. Got more? Got enough for a whole other week of coffee experiments? Send them in.

¹ No they don’t.

I stumbled on your blog, and wanted to tell you about a tradition in my family. I’m from rural eastern North Car0lina, and my family has been having “cheese in coffee” as a treat as long as I can remember. It should be hoop cheese, or “rat” cheese — a medium cheddar that is NEVER refrigerated, and has either a red or black rind. Cut the cheese into large-ish chunks, pour very strong, very hot, very fresh coffee over it in a big, deep cup. Let it steep while you toast two pieces of bread. Once the bread is toasted, fish the cheese out in wonderfully warm, soft globs and eat them off the toasted bread. Then you dump out the coffee — it’s done its part by melting and flavoring the cheese.

Well I didn’t have any rat cheese around, but I did have some regular cheddar that’s about to go moldy.

I should’ve cut off a bigger chunk, because half of it seemed to go missing after mingling with the coffee. I only managed to scoop out a little smear to put on my bread.

It tastes great on the bread. The coffee added just a bit beyond melting cheese directly on bread, and it wasn’t as soggy as I feared it may be.

Of course I didn’t waste good coffee by harvesting its goo and tossing it aside like a cheap male escort. It had taken on an aesthetically pleasing bubbled look. HEY I DIDN’T THINK THIS WAS SWISS CHEESE LOL.

At first it was fine. I didn’t notice much difference in taste except for a bit of oiliness. But then that missing cheese came back, in the form of fuzzy bits gradually appearing in the coffee.

The weird part was, even when the coffee had been sitting perfectly still for a few minutes, the fuzzy bits danced and swayed in the coffee’s convection current. It was actually quite lovely.

Here, I’ll show you. I present the very first PWTIC movie. Please hold your applause until after the film has concluded.

But while it was lovely to look at, I was less inclined to continue putting self-locomotive fuzzy things into my mouth.

Stay tuned for CHEESE WEEK’s exciting conclusion.

Even after extended exposure to steaming hot coffee, this cheese didn’t melt. It’s a tough little mofo. Each cube had that mellowed-out taste I described last time, except more so. The bigger surface area and the ability to mix coffee and cheese in each spoonful really allowed the flavours to mix.

This is truly great. If you’re willing to take the next step beyond dipping bread cheese in coffee, this is the better way to experience it.

STAY TUNED for more CHEESE WEEK excitement.