Bailey's Mousse

Went to a shindig at a former coworker's farm last summer and he pulled this out at the end of dinner. It's pretty strong, for pie.

• 3 T water
• 1 package unflavored gelatin
• 2 c whipping cream
• 1/2 c sugar
• 1/2 Bailey's Irish cream

Dissolve gelatin in water, heating as necessary.
Chill whipping cream and bowl, then beat to firm peaks.
Add gelatin solution and whip back to firm peaks.
Mix in sugar, then fold in liquor.

You can substitute Kahlua or Buttershots for the Irish cream. Other substitutions can probably also be made, but I haven't tried them.

As-is, serves 4. Doubled, it should fill a pie crust. Make sure you bake the crust first, if you're supposed to. I forgot to do that on the last chocolate mousse pie I made so I had to run back to the store at midnight before Thanksgiving and pick up all the ingredients I'd just wasted.

Breakfast in a glass

Not a weekday breakfast, though.  Treat this one like a mimosa.

Pour into a tumbler:

6-8 ounces of orange juice

Add a shot of:

chilled bacon vodka

Mix well and serve.

I had some Bakon from Kahn's Fine Wines in Naptown, but you can also make your own--thanks to the Pinterest board from Lindsay Allen at the Editor's Taste Buds.

You can drink it on the rocks, but I always keep my fruit juice chilled and my booze in the freezer, so it didn't need it.

My experience was like first drinking a swig of orange juice to wash down some bacon, followed by the taste of having eaten some bacon after drinking orange juice, accompanied by a shot of vodka.

Eventually I will try a bloody Mary with the Bakon (also from Lindsay's Pinterest board).  Not a huge fan of tomato juice, but I like BLTs and I actually had a pretty good bloody Mary at a barbecue joint in Champaign once that was saved through the liberal use of black and hot peppers.

Colorado bulldog

I learned this one from my brother in law, who was a showtender in a previous life; alas, it was at a now-defunct barbecue joint, and I didn't know him then.  Still, he can show me a thing or two.

He actually introduced it to me and my sister at a cousin's wedding, or rather, the reception.  The bartender there didn't know it but he had all the ingredients and was amenable to learning new recipes; once we had three bulldogs in our hands, the people in line behind us immediately said "Ooh, what's that?"

It is, as they say, or at least as I like to say, dangerously smooth.

Start with two shots or a larger one to one mix of vodka and kahlua.  Standard black Russian so far, right?
Top off with cream, or milk if it's all you got:  white Russian territory now.

The thing that sets it apart is now you add a splash or so of Coke.  I've heard root beer works but I haven't tried it yet.

It's not a radically different drink, and there's not enough Coke to curdle the dairy component unless you let it sit there for a while, but the bubbly sweetness lightens the drink up so it's no longer obvious that you're drinking something that's half liquor.

When we went back up for refills, everybody was ordering them; when we went back again, the bartenders were out.

Modified unnamed drink recipe

Yes, I still have nothing to call this drink.  My brother in law came up with a salutatory modification at Christmas.  Start, as before, with a 2:1:1 mix of ginger ale, chocolate vodka, and Chambourd.

Then, toss in a shot of sours.

Shake and serve on the rocks.

The sour addition brightens up the flavor respectably.  Depending on how thoroughly it's mixed and how exact your ratios are, the chocolate may become a subtone or the sour may just enhance the fruitiness of the raspberry liqueur.  It's all good.

I don't have a name for this drink, but a coworker came up with it while traveling for business.   I'm guessing a bit at the proportions so if anyone tries this and has a better idea, please let me know.

Pour into a tumbler with ice:

4 oz. chocolate vodka
4 oz. Chambourd

Top off with ginger ale.  I recommend Vernor's, just on principle.

The amount of alcohol might be off.  It was about a 50/50 mix but my original impression was of a slightly taller glass, and she held her fingers 3-4" apart and said "about this much alcohol" total.  Could be four ounces total, could be somewhere in between.

Actually, let me amend what I said above.  If anyone who has a good sense for the balance of ingredients in a cocktail, with or without tasting one, please let me know.   Maybe someday I'll tell you about the dangers of empirical reverse engineering of cocktails, but for now just trust me and don't try too hard to find the flaws unless you've got a knack for it.

Irish ice cream

This receipe was my second foray into "no minors without their parent or guardian" ice cream.  My first was Alton Brown's egg nog ice cream, actually a frozen custard (incidentally, his avocado ice cream is good too, reminding me for some reason of the green tea ice cream at some Japanese restaurants).

After my foray into Irish toast, I knew there was untapped potential in liquor as a cooking ingredient, and when I got in the mood for ice cream one day with not quite enough milk to go around (not a situation I like to be in, except that this kind of thing keeps happening when I am), this recipe all but manifested itself whole and complete in a single glance.

But first, the ingredients:

4 egg yolks
1/3 c sugar
1 pint Irish cream liqueur
1 c heavy cream
optional:  1-2 T small chocolate chips or chopped dark chocolate

Mix the yolks and sugar until smooth and the yolks become a slightly brighter yellow.

Over high heat in a small saucepan, mix the cream and half the liqueur.  When it just starts to boil, remove from heat and temper it into the eggs.  I had done my egg yolks in a food processor so I just left them in there during this step and turned it back on while I added the hot cream, slowly enough not to cook the yolks or the plastic components of my processor.

Return everything to the saucepan and cook, stirring frequently, just until it reaches 160˚F.  Remove from heat and add the rest of the liqueur.  My saucepan tends to retain heat, so to facilitate cooling and prevent overheating, I sometimes have a second, prechilled pot or metal bowl on hand, or a shallow ice water bath to partway submerge the pot in.

When you're satisfied you're not going to cook everything in your fridge from the residual heat, move the mixture to the fridge and let it cool to 40˚F.  Lower would actually be better; maybe you should put it in the freezer a little while, instead.  Because of the relatively high amount of alcohol, the freezing point is going to be pretty low.

I use one of those ice cream makers that has the freezable liquid core instead of one that uses ice, so I just leave my cores in the freezer all the time and keep the temperature turned all the way down.  It's enough to almost completely freeze the flavored vodka I keep on hand for another recipe I'll post later, so for most ice creams it sets pretty quickly (especially the avocado one).

When the mixture is cold, add it to your ice cream maker and follow the manufacturer's instructions.  If you decided to add the chocolate, wait until the mixture has started to firm up; if it's too runny, it'll all get pushed to the sides and the bottom, and if it's too close to solid, it will just stay near the top and not mix.

Serve in modest quantities.  Keep in mind that it's over half liqueur (way over half if you replace the heavy cream with more Irish cream--why not?) so you'll basically be consuming a bowl full of 20-30 proof liquor one heaping spoonful at a time.  It adds up.

Irish toast

My first experience with this recipe was when I had some sourdough bread and was in the mood for French toast.  I don't recall now how much of my inspiration came from an insufficiency of milk and how much came from me looking at the long-neglected bottle of Irish cream in my freezer and asking myself "Well, why not?"

Incidentally, there are sometimes good reasons why not.  I will share them with you from time to time.

I started with a pretty basic French toast recipe, but made one important substitute:

2/3 c Irish cream

4 large eggs

1 t vanilla

1/4 t salt

Some recipes I see call for two tablespoons of maple syrup at this point.  Growing up, the French toast I always had instead some nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves, and we saved the syrup for a condiment.  Here, there's really no need, since the Irish cream brings enough sweetness and flavor to the party all by itself.

You'll notice I didn't specify any bread at this point; use whatever you want.  The baseline recipe I used said to saturate six slices of white bread with the egg mixture, but I know some people who only like getting both sides of the bread wet, which has the advantage of the bread being less likely to fall apart.  Personally, I like the insides of my French toast more like pudding than bread, except for the time when I hope to succeed in making French toast sticks as a finger food, and I usually end up trying to make French toast when I realize my bread is nigh-stale and unsuitable for most other purposes, so I put all my bread and mixture in a container and leave it in the refrigerator for a few days.  Sure it's more than willing to fall apart when it's ready, but I usually have ended up with large fragments of bread from trying to divvy up the stale loaf in the first place.  I guess there's always baked French toast or French toast casserole or bread pudding.

Unless you're soaking the bread, you can put a skillet on medium heat before you start dipping, grease it, and let the temperature stabilize while you finish your preparations.  Otherwise, put a skillet on medium heat, grease it, and let it get up to temperature while you try to figure out the best way to move the bread to the pan without turning it into croutons.

Cook until the egg in the bread has turned golden brown, just a couple moments, and then flip; repeat, then remove to a plate to serve.  You're not likely to cook all the alcohol out, and you shouldn't want to try; this is a stay-in-for-the-morning breakfast.  May as well pour yourself a mimosa.

As for "Why not?"  No good reason that I can see.  Chalk one up in the "Success!" column for this experiment.