Unnamed

Perhaps as a nice compliment to my previous post, this one will tell you about my first batch of homemade Irish cream.

This isn't something, like cheesecake, I'd always wanted to make myself. I was happy to head to the liquor store and pick up a nice bottle o' Bailey's and to nurse it as a nice liquid dessert til it ran out. But while I was reading my favorite Irish food blog, and was drooling over her post about making pavlova, she linked to a recipe for homemade Irish cream in case you were feeling adventurous enough to make it to use in the pavlova recipe. At the time, I was more interested the how-to for the meringue, but the drink recipe stayed in the back of my mind.

It was probably a day or two later that I found myself killing my lunch hour in one of my favorites fashions: perusing the shelves of Kitchen Kapers, sighing wistfully and lusting after dream gadgets and things I could make when I finally have a "real" kitchen in which to toil. Then I happened upon the most lovely and perfect vessels for homemade Irish cream. Gorgeous glass carafes with an airtight seal. I walked away from them at the time, but I couldn't get them out of my head.

So here I am, a month later, with two bottles of homemade Irish cream in my fridge (and a nice-sized glassful in my belly). The recipe is ridiculously easy, and yields a more chocolatey flavor than the bottled Bailey's. Now I just need to think of a nice name for my blend, so I can hang a pretty label around the bottle neck to serve during the holidays. The initial idea was to make it to bring around for our holiday visiting. But it all happened so fast...I bought the bottles, got them home, and just HAD to make some. A test run. Clearly justified. What if it was awful, and I needed every bit of the 3 months between us and the first holiday of the season?

And here, my friends, are some photos of my process. (PS: when I make it for an audience wider than John, myself, and a few other test-drivers, I'll spring for more quality ingredients. For this batch, store brand seem to have done just fine.)

Here is just a smashing shot of the bottle necks.

All of the ingredients. That's right. Cream, condensed and evaporated milk, coffee, chocolate, and whiskey. Done.

Whisking it all together: chocolate was melted in a double-boiler, then the bowl removed from the steam. From there, add in the liquids (and coffee), and whisk it til it's smooth.

 Here's the coffee before getting dumped into the warm cream.

 Mmm. Frothy. By this point, it smelled awesome in my kitchen--sweet from the melted chocolate, and boozy from the whiskey.

These bottles are just so amazingly elegant. We chose Bushmills whiskey over Jameson simply to try something different. I feel like Jameson is the go-to here in the states because of the name, but Bushmills seems to be equally popular in Ireland, so we gave it a whirl. It smelled and tasted heavenly. Definitely a good choice.