“You can tell that it's [a real Starite] because of the way it [sparkles]” - True statement, just try typing "Starite" in Scribblenauts Unlimited and see what happens!

Inspiration

The Starite is a star-fruity tropical drink that sparkles just like the real thing in Scribblenauts, where true Starites glow and shine. Inspired by those celestial rewards, this cocktail aims to capture that same sense of whimsicality in liquid form. The cocktail inspiration combines starfruit-infused vodka and a custom starfruit syrup with bianco vermouth and a touch of lemongrass bitters for subtle complexity. Its mocktail counterpart leans further into those lemongrass-accented flavors using a green tea base. Both versions shine gold and fruity, which is what I imagine a Starite would taste like if Maxwell or Lily managed to take a bite of one.

This drink was developed for and showcased during our second annual independent charity event, Mixing Drinks and Changing Lives, which you can view on YouTube. We raised money for Made By Dyslexia and chose Scribblenauts Unlimited as our featured game because it reflects the unique relationship many people with dyslexia have with language-based experiences like wordplay and creative problem solving.

Workshopping

It's A Star, Right?

The workshopping for the Starite cocktail actually began with a craving: I knew immediately that I wanted to build the drink around starfruit. I'd had some experience with them during my Paper Mario series, but I was still rather green at the time and wanted to give it another go. Unfortunately, fresh starfruit was nowhere to be found at my local grocery stores. No frozen options either. So I took a gamble on ordering dried starfruit online. Even that wasn't perfect. The slices were more candied than dried, and included added sugar and preservatives, but it was the closest I could get, and it turned out to be workable.

While waiting for the dried fruit to arrive, I began brainstorming what form the drink could take. I’d previously riffed on the Star cocktail for one of the Paper Mario drinks and figured this could be a chance to take it even further. The Star (as defined by Difford’s Guide) is a mix of apple brandy (like Calvados or applejack), sweet vermouth, gomme syrup, and bitters. I wanted to keep the core idea: a fruit spirit, fortified wine, and bitters, but with a brighter, tropical twist.

I also thought about the visual concept during this time. The drink needed to look like a Starite. I managed to track down star-shaped bottles at Michael’s (scored during a road trip to visit a friend), and the moment I held one up, it clicked with me. A real Starite sparkles! I typically avoid leaning on visual sparkle as a cocktail gimmick, but in Scribblenauts Unlimited, only the real Starites sparkle. The ones you can create with Maxwell's notebook; the fake ones, don’t. So in this case, I felt the sparkle had to stay for the theming to land.

Starfruit Infusions

In my previous experiences with starfruit, I had trouble really concentrating that starfruit flavor in an affordable fashion. From what I recall, starfruit were pretty expensive per fruit when fresh, and I’ve since done more reading that suggests dried fruits can provide a more concentrated flavor. I was a bit disappointed to find that the dried starfruit I’d ordered online was actually sweetened and more candied than truly dried, but I took this as an opportunity to work with what I had. If concentration would be a bit technically intense, I could try infusing the starfruit into two parts of the drink: the base spirit and the syrup.

Before I dive into the technical details, I want to give a quick overview. I used a combination of techniques to evaluate the best way to extract flavor at the time, including cold infusion, sous vide, and enzymatic clarification. If you're just here for the end result, you can find the final recipe for the 50 Brix Starfruit Syrup and the Starfruit-Infused Vodka at the bottom of these sections.

Starfruit Syrup

For the syrup, I started with 250 ml of water and 102 g of dried starfruit, sealed into a sous vide bag and heated at 150°F (65°C) for two hours. Partway through the sous vide bath, I noticed that the semi-dried starfruit had swelled noticeably. When I originally tasted the fruit, it was chewy and became more flavorful the longer I chewed. That got me thinking: maybe I could replicate that breakdown inside the bag.

Since the bag was in a 150°F bath, putting my mouth on it obviously wasn't an option. So I used my fingers to gently mush the fruit through the bag. Some of the pieces began to pop and splatter, increasing the surface area and releasing more flavor into the liquid. My fingers got a little too warm, so I switched to a wooden muddler and pressed into each piece gently. Thanks to the rehydration, the fruit was soft and easy to mash. The liquid in the bag turned noticeably cloudier, which I took as a promising sign of flavor extraction.

Once the cook time was complete, I let the bag cool and carefully strained out the solids. Since the dried starfruit had already been sweetened, I used a Brix refractometer to measure the resulting liquid, effectively a starfruit juice. It came in at about 25 Brix, or 25% sugar. For a cocktail-appropriate syrup, I was aiming closer to 50 Brix.

To bring it up to spec, I used a sugar-adjustment formula adapted from the book Tropical Standard. You take the mass of your syrup, multiply it by the difference between your desired Brix and your current Brix, then divide that by 100 minus your desired Brix. This gives you the amount of sugar (in grams) to add to your syrup.

Here’s the formula for clarity:

Grams of Sugar to Add = (Mass of Syrup) × (Desired Brix − Current Brix) / (100 − Desired Brix)

Using this method, I brought the syrup to approximately 52 Brix. The final result had a distinctly starfruity flavor: grassy, lightly citrusy, and tropical without any sharp acidic bite. When paired with the vodka, this became my go-to strategy for concentrating starfruit flavor without needing to boil it down (though I’m still curious to explore that someday).

50 Brix Starfruit Syrup:

• 250 ml water

• 100 g dried starfruit

• Seal in a sous vide bag and cook at 150°F (65°C) for about an hour

• Halfway through, remove the bag and gently mash the fruit to increase extraction. Return it to the bath for the remaining hour

• Let cool, then filter the liquid from the solids (I used a fine mesh strainer to press out remaining juice, followed by a coffee filter)

• My yield was about 300g of liquid, which measured 25 Brix. To bring it to 50 Brix, I used the formula: (300× (50 - 25)) / (100 - 50) = 150 g of sugar

• Combine and shake until all sugar is dissolved.

• Yields about 400 ml of syrup

Starfruit Vodka

I began with a cold infusion as my first attempt at flavor extraction. I used 100 ml of vodka with 41 g of dried starfruit, letting the mixture steep overnight. As with the syrup, the dried fruit proved highly absorbent, soaking up more vodka than anticipated. After muddling and straining, the mixture was quite cloudy. I added a drop of Pectinex Ultra-SPL, which clarified the vodka nicely. The result was a sweetened, translucent starfruit-infused vodka with a noticeable starfruit-specific flavor. I used this first batch for the majority of my early flavor balancing and experimentation.

When it came time to make a second batch, I scaled things up and switched to a sous vide method, inspired in part by how effective it had been during the syrup-making process. I combined 320 ml of vodka with approximately 160 g of dried starfruit, sealed it in a sous vide bag, and cooked it at 150°F (65°C) for two hours. Midway through, I removed the bag and gently muddled the contents before continuing the cook. It was a similar approach to what I had done with the syrup, except this time, vodka was my solvent rather than water.

As I worked through this process, I further learned to appreciate the benefits of sous vide infusions for alcohol. While heat helps extract flavors, heating alcohol on the stovetop risks boiling off the ethanol, which would reduce the proof and potentially alter the final flavor. Cold infusions avoid this issue by not applying heat, but they also take longer and may not be as efficient. With sous vide, the sealed environment keeps everything contained during the hot water bath, preserving both alcohol content and flavor integrity.

Once the bath finished, I let the mixture cool to room temperature before straining it. This time, I chose to leave the vodka unclarified. The slightly hazy appearance ended up working beautifully with the visual shimmer of the final drink, so I embraced it as part of the overall presentation.

Starfruit-infused Vodka:

• 400 ml vodka

• 200 g dried starfruit

• Seal in a sous vide bag and cook at 150°F (65°C) for about an hour

• Halfway through, remove the bag and gently mash the fruit to increase extraction. Return it to the bath for the remaining hour

• Let cool, then filter the liquid from the solids (I used a fine mesh strainer to press out remaining juice, followed by a coffee filter)

• Yields about 450 ml of infused vodka

These two components became the flavorful foundation for both the cocktail and mocktail versions of the Starite.

Scribblenautic Synthesis: Flavor Assembly & Balancing

Accenting the Starfruit in our Starite

To begin the flavor balancing process, I started by experimenting with combinations to bring out the best in the infused vodka and syrup. My goal was to find a flavor profile that felt balanced, playful, and worthy of being dubbed a Starite. The journey wound up taking a few twists, and by the end, the final cocktail had diverged considerably from the original Star cocktail that inspired it.

I began by exploring the relationship between the starfruit vodka and bianco vermouth, hoping to mirror the structure of the Star cocktail in a more tropical, lighter direction. A 1:1 ratio leaned too heavily into the vermouth, but a 3:1 ratio (vodka to vermouth) created a beautifully creamy citrus note and brought some unexpected complexity that reminded me faintly of berries. It wasn’t quite complete, but it gave me a solid base to build from.

After playing with the bianco vermouth, I realized that the light tanginess of the starfruit wasn’t coming through as clearly as I’d hoped. So I began researching what flavor compounds starfruit actually shares with other fruits. A paper on starfruit published in ScienceDirect listed some key volatile compounds like methyl heptanoate, hexyl hexanoate, and various lactones, substances also found in stone fruits like peaches, plums, and apricots. It also listed a few common fruit-related compounds like linoleic acid, palmitic acid, and lauric acid. However, I soon learned that these are not responsible for tart flavors. They are categorized as fatty acids, and while they are present in fruit, they do not contribute meaningfully to the flavor's acidity.

A bit more digging revealed that the tartness in starfruit is primarily due to non-volatile acids, specifically citric, malic, and notably oxalic acid. Rhubarb, interestingly enough, is also high in oxalic acid, which briefly made me consider using it in the drink. However, I decided against it due to its strong magenta color, which didn’t match the visual concept I had in mind. Fun fact: too much oxalic acid intake is associated with kidney issues, which is just one more reason to table that idea for a later date.

At this point, I turned again to The Flavor Matrix and examined its section on tropical fruits, where starfruit can be grouped. When considering flavor pairing, fruits within a shared category often complement one another. Since starfruit is tropical, it seemed promising to try pairing it with pineapple or tamarind. I had been experimenting a bit with Smirnoff's spicy tamarind flavor and gave it a brief try here. Though it was tangy and tasty, even small amounts overshadowed the starfruit, making it feel like the wrong fit. Back in the book, I came across another interesting note: lemongrass shares about 60 percent of its aromatic profile with tropical fruits. That connection, combined with the fact that limes contain both citric and malic acid, led me to believe that I could incorporate lime acids into another ingredient, namely the pineapple juice, to provide both structural support and brightness, helping the starfruit flavor stand out. The lemongrass, in turn, could bring balance and subtlety to the overall profile.

Assembling the final drink was where everything came together. I pulled from the starfruit syrup and vodka infusions, then brought in just a bit of peach syrup, a touch of lime-adjusted pineapple juice*, and a couple of dashes of Honest John Lemongrass Cardamom bitters to round it out. The adjusted pineapple juice gave the cocktail a bright and juicy tang, while the lemongrass bitters introduced a subtle, grounding complexity. The peach syrup** acted only as a soft accent, adding just a bit of body without dominating the profile. And of course, a pinch of luster dust gives the Starite its characteristic, authentic sparkle.

It’s worth noting that the drink does lean a bit pineapple-forward overall, but even so, it preserves that starfruit essence that I'd tried to capture.

* To make the lime-adjusted pineapple juice, I used a method adapted from Tropical Standard: for every 100 ml of pineapple juice, add 3.2 g citric acid and 2 g malic acid. This mimics the acid profile of lime juice, providing the structure and brightness needed to balance the rest of the ingredients.

** For readers looking to replicate the same peach syrup, I used Simply Peach juice (measured at 10 Brix) and added sugar using the same formula described earlier to bring it up to roughly 50 Brix. This could apply to any peach juice base that you use, though!

A Mock-Starite that Retains the Sparkle

For the mocktail version of the Starite, I kept as many core ingredients as possible while replacing the alcoholic components with something that would complement the syrup and acid-adjusted pineapple base. In place of the vodka, vermouth, and bitters, I turned to a green tea and lemongrass blend I had on hand, Worry Monster by Par Avion Tea. 

The lemongrass in the tea made it a particularly good fit, since it shares aromatic similarities with tropical fruits, and it helped provide a gentle structure and body to the drink as well as some mild tannins.

The resulting mocktail mellowed out the pineapple-forward profile of the cocktail and brought more of the vegetal, grassy starfruit tones to the surface. Without the alcohol, the drink leaned greener and more grounded, yet still sparkled with a touch of gold luster dust.

Starite Mocktail (Non-Alcoholic) :

• 2 oz (60 ml) Lemongrass Green Tea ("Worry Monster" by Par Avion Tea)

• 1.5 oz (45 ml) Starfruit Syrup (50° Brix)

• 0.75 oz (22.5 ml) Acid-Adjusted Pineapple Juice (Lime, Libby’s)

• 0.25 oz (7.5 ml) Peach Juice Syrup (50° Brix, Simply Peach)

• 0.25 tsp Gold Luster Dust (Potionz)

• Method: Shake & Strain

Flavor Analysis

Cocktail: Sweet and tangy with a noticeable tartness reminiscent of star fruit. Tastes like an adjusted pineapple juice with subtle vegetal undertones.

Mocktail: Pineapple sweet and a bit tangy. A noticeable flavor of vegetal and almost star fruity green tea seems to set beneath the more prominent pineapple flavor.