dressing up your tiki drink

Its not too hard to find a pineapple wedge, red cherry, mini umbrella, or some mint leaf...but where would someone find a tropical gardenia or other flower to put on top of a tiki drink?

Where do people here get their tropical flowers?

Some tiki drinks just aren't complete without that perfect flower floating on top...

Good question. Also, where does one get the plastic base to float the flower on?

Chip said something about that once. Here it is.

I didn't see anything in Chip's post regarding the plastic floater thingie.

Is there a preferred way to anchor the flower into a drink. Next time I throw a tiki party at home, and it looks like it will be sooner rather than later, I think I'd like to have a few drinks with gardenas. Sandiegodan,, I'll be sure to have you and the wahine over to this event. As for as the cusine, I'm thinking of doing a poly/italian fusion thing.

My money would be on a shaved ice cone or the large amount of ice used in communal drinks would keep the flower in place. Otherwise before you mix it use a small dab of super glue on the stem and that might be all ya need to hold the flower in place, but i would think the ice or cone would be the prefered method.

I agree--as long as you have ice (especially crushed ice), I would think the stem would hold it up. If you're in the right climate, you should try growing the flowers yourself. I have two mint plants, so I'm making Noa Noas like they're going out of style from the Grog Log. I put a sprig in for a garnish, and it stands up.

You can also try sugarcane sticks for garnishes/swizzle sticks. I got some from some company in Hawaii:

http://www.maui-info.com/SugarCaneStix_peeled.html

There are a lot of other sources on the web.

Anyone know of any books specifically dedicated to garnishing drinks? I have a number of drink recipe books, but would love to have one largely on this topic.