For Granny
One of my favourite traditions of the season is to put on some Christmas carols and have a glass or two of Bailey's Irish cream on the rocks while I'm decorating the tree and wrapping the presents. Turns out that I inherited this habit from my Granny who not only loves a glass herself, but has also been known to whip up her own homemade batch at Christmas time.
Recipes for homemade Irish cream are easy to find, just as easy to make, and cost about half that of the commercial product.
Excited by the success of the Christmas Vodka, I was inspired to create this especially Christmassy version of Irish cream by infusing the whiskey with the pudding spices as in the vodka recipe. The addition of caramel flavouring was an after thought and adds an extra dimension, but can be left out if you don't have any.
Ingredients
350ml Irish Whiskey
200g mixed fruit
1 cinnamon quill
1 tsp ground mixed spice
3 cloves
pinch of nutmeg
200ml single cream
1 tin condensed milk
1 tsp coffee essence or instant espresso powder
3 tsp chocolate sauce
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 tsp almond essence
1 tsp caramel flavouring (optional)
Method
Put the whiskey, fruit, brown sugar and spices in a bowl. Leave to soak for 24-48 hours.
Strain the whiskey into a clean bowl through a sieve lined in muslin. Squeeze the bundle of fruit to extract as much liquid as you can.
Whisk in the rest of the ingredients one at a time.
If there remain undissolved bits of cream or coffee, you can strain the irish cream again before bottling. Pour into a sterilised bottle of one litre capacity, or a number of smaller bottles to use as gifts.
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