It’s easy to confuse Blue Hawaiian and Blue Hawaii, two similarly named tropical cocktail recipes with nearly identical vibrant blue colors. But the two have different ingredients and origin stories. The Blue Hawaii dates to 1957 when Harry Yee, a bartender at what’s now the Hilton Hawaiian Village Waikiki Resort in Honolulu, Hawaii, created a cocktail for Dutch distiller Bols. Yee made his Blue Hawaii with vodka, white rum, blue curaçao liqueur, and sour mix.
The Blue Hawaiian recipe emerged from Yee’s rubric, but it brought cream of coconut to the mix. The resulting drink has an unapologetically luxurious texture and coconut flavor analogous to the piña colada, another frozen cocktail often poured into frosty hurricane glasses. While you could serve a Blue Hawaiian on the rocks, why would you? Build the drink directly in the blender with cubed or crushed ice. Add a squeeze of fresh lemon juice for brightness or splash of coconut rum to amplify its tropical flavors. This is no time for minimalism, so garnish your Blue Hawaiian with a wedge of fresh pineapple, a cocktail umbrella, and an edible flower.