Homemade Irish Cream

With my college girl coming home, bringing her roommate (whom we love to pieces) and a few more events and guests coming up I thought it was time to make some Irish Cream.  The recipe was my Nana’s and I’ve tweaked it a bit to reflect my tastes.

This makes a lovely gift for your friends for Christmas and I’ve become quite popular giving it away. It’s seasonal and you can make it for much cheaper than buying bottles of the premium brand of Irish Cream. I’m a big fan of that stuff but it runs into money.

 

 

It’s a very simple process and I’ve assembled the ingredients for you to see.  The recipe is down below but essentially you just put all of this in a blender and whiz it together. You will notice there are a lot of generic brands there. The only real money you need to spend is the whiskey.  The Hershey’s syrup was due to a sale.  Next to the syrup you may notice the medicinal looking bottle.Last summer Simcha Fisher posted about her habit of making homemade vanilla to give as gifts for Christmas and I followed her advice.  The vanilla is good and I bought these bottles to store and use it. The bottles come in handy for other things as well.

A word about the whiskey.  Buy good whiskey.  As in all cooking with alcohol it is better to cook with something you would enjoy drinking.  It never does to really cheap out on the whiskey.  We enjoy Jameson which is good Irish (Catholic) whiskey.  I buy it in the large bottle at this time of year. I use half the bottle to make three batches of Irish cream and the rest is consumed.  The large is about $50 and when you consider a small bottle of Irish cream is about $23 then you see how economical this can be.

This is my blender. I received it at my bridal shower and now only one of the buttons works. Honestly though, I could never see the difference between the buttons, they all made the same amount of unholy noise and seemed to create the same level of whizzing.  Anyway I am waiting for it to die, which it will do during some urgent need to blend I’m sure. I would love to have a Vitamix  someday but it’s not likely to be in the budget anytime soon.

 

My Nana’s funnel makes the transfer to the pretty bottle easier.  I started scavenging for bottles this summer. This one comes from Aldi’s sparkling lemonade. I bought two every week for a while, as a treat for Sunday dinner, and hoarded the bottles.  The brown bottle below is Aldi’s pumpkin cider, which was the autumn Sunday treat. I have fewer of them because Dave appropriated a bunch them for his brewing.

 

There was enough of this batch left over for us all to have a generous glass and these two pretty bottles became gifts.  That’s the peace light there, still going. On it’s third candle. Pretty cool, I think.

 

Here’s the recipe.

Irish Cream Recipe

1 2/3 cups Irish whiskey

1 cup of cream (milk can be substituted but whole, not skim or low fat)

I 14 oz. can of sweetened condensed milk

1 Tbsp instant coffee crystals

2 tsp vanilla

1 tsp almond extract

2 Tbsp chocolate syrup

Mix all ingredients in a blender and blend until combined. Makes about 2 quarts. Keep in the fridge and will keep about 2 weeks.

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