Showing posts with label drinks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label drinks. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Homemade Irish Cream

I was at the store musing about which brand of Irish Cream to pick up. In response to my musings someone working in the store mentioned that he usually made his own, and then went on to make some recommendations that I didn't catch because ... I can make this myself?!

So I went home with a bottle of Irish whiskey, a recipe, and a short shopping list.

Mix together:

  • 1 cup heavy cream
  • 1 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk
  • 1 2/3 cups Irish whiskey
  • (recipe called for 1 tsp instant coffee granules that I skipped)
  • 2 tablespoons chocolate syrup (that I made from scratch, but that's a separate story)
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 tsp almond extract
I blended them in my Vitamix and stored the elixir in a 1 quart jar in the fridge. 

I think this costs out about the same as the cheep Irish Cream I usually buy on sale for around $10. I did a head to head unblinded test highly prone to confirmation that definitively generated an anecdotal data point that I like the new stuff quite well. Noticeably thicker and notes from the whiskey came through nicely. For folks with more refined pallets you may want to go with a higher end whiskey. It does seem like an obvious point of experimentation if you have other whiskies you fancy. 

Friday, August 3, 2012

Sekanjabin


I enjoy sekanjabin on warm summer days. And when else do you get a chance to drink a cucumber?!

Dissolve 4 cups sugar in 2 1/2 cups of water; when it comes to a boil add 1 cup wine vinegar.
Simmer 1/2 hour. Add a handful of mint, remove from fire, let cool.
The syrup stores without refrigeration.
Dilute the resulting syrup to taste with ice water (5 to 10 parts water to 1 part syrup).
Add a goodly amount of grated cucumber.

from http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/cariadoc/drinks.html