homemade baileys

I’m a sucker for alcoholic drinks that are essentially chocolate milk for grown-ups. One time, this bartender in a fancy Italian restaurant made me a drink that was like eating an excellent chocolate truffle—damn, I wish I knew how he did that. Sigh. Anyway, in search of repeating that divine beverage, I found Baileys, which is pretty great, but not the drinkable truffle drink. (I think it had Frangelica in it, plus a bunch of other stuff. Anyone have any leads on genius, Italian bartenders?)

But did you know how expensive Baileys is? Holy cow, it’s like $30 bucks a bottle! Sheesh!

In Baileys rebound, I tried a bottle of Carolans, but rejected it. I mean, it tastes pretty good at first, but then leaves this weird, chemical residue in my mouth, yuck. I pawned it off on my unsuspecting cousin, who is, um, probably reading this right now. Oh, Hi, Tracie! How ya doing?

Okay, moving right along. In deference to our current economic crisis, I decided to try to make my own Baileys. How hard can it be? Here is a recipe I found on-line, and then tweaked a little:

Homemade Baileys for Cheapskates

1 cup light cream (organic half-n-half worked well)

14 oz sweetened condensed milk (this was like heroin for me when I was a kid. a can of condensed milk and a spoon, and they would have to drop me off at detox)

1 2/3 cup Irish Whiskey (I used Bushmills)

1 tsp instant coffee ( I didn’t have any, so I used Kahlua)

2 Tbs melted chocolate (you could use Hershey’s style syrup, but why go for the cheap stuff, when you’ve got some of the good stuff on hand?)

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp almond

Mix it all in a blender for 30-60 seconds and then let it sit in the fridge for a couple of days.

Of course, I tried some right out of the blender and was quite disappointed. Turns out I don’t like alcoholic chocolate milk after all—maybe there is some other component to the fancy, sweet, drink experience that only that Italian bartender knew.

But, then again, maybe not, because, Lo! I tried my concoction again the next day and it had improved immensely. And the day after that, it had become quite lovely! Delightful, in fact! And I doubt I will find out how good it might taste after waiting a week because it will probably all be gone! Ahem. No, I am not a lush. Much. I’d like to do a side-by-side with real Baileys, but again, I may run out of the moonshine version before I manage to go to the ABC store and plunk down my $30 bucks.

If I do, I’ll be sure to report my findings.