This chocolate whisky liqueur is a little piece of Christmas heaven in a glass. Bring it out on Christmas Eve when you’ve finally managed to wrangle the kids into bed, waited patiently until they’re soundly sleeping and are left facing several hours of finishing up the wrapping and assembling of presents to go under the tree before they wake up again, in oh, maybe five hours.
Unless of course you live in an alternate universe (quite popular these days) and Santa delivers yours, in which case you can turn on a favourite Christmas movie and relax.
This recipe was in, I believe, the Christmas issue of Food and Wine magasine a few years ago. The article was on chocolate recipes by various chefs around the country, but it was this one in particular, created by Christopher Elbow of Elbow Artisinal Chocolates for his first annual employee Christmas Party, that caught my eye, because, well, chocolate and whisky in a glass, people.
And the truly amazing part? Not only is this drink delicious but it is ridiculously easy to make, as in ten minutes or so. Which means if you run out during your last minute, late night marathon gift wrapping session, you can very easily whip up a fresh batch and hardly miss a beat. Just be careful, though, this goes down so easily it’s easy to forget it packs a whisky punch. Get too distracted and you’ll have a whole lot of explaining to do to the kids in the morning.
It would also make a fabulous gift for friends and neighbours…perhaps with a loaf of gingerbread. You can bottle it in long, slender bottles (World Market has some) or, perhaps not quite as elegant, but easier and cheaper, mason jars.
Chocolate Whisky Liqueur
- 1/2 C. light corn syrup
- 1/4 C.water
- 1 vanilla bean, split, seeds scraped
- 4 oz bittersweet chocolate
- 1 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk
- 1 C. half-and-half
- 1/2 C. heavy cream
- 1 C. Irish whiskey
- In a saucepan, combine the corn syrup, water and vanilla seeds and bring to a boil.
- Add the chocolate and whisk over moderate heat until melted.
- Transfer to a blender and let cool for 5 minutes.
- Add the condensed milk, half-and-half and cream and blend.
- Pour the mixture into a bowl and stir in the whiskey.
- Pour into bottles and refrigerate overnight.
Keeps in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks but probably longer is fine. Not that it’s ever been around long enough to test this.
Notes: In years past I have always used a vanilla bean. Due to the atrocious price of beans right now, I used vanilla paste which I had on hand, but vanilla extract would work too. One bottle of whisky makes 3 batches and each batch will fill about 3 mason jars or 1 big bottle and 1 mason jar.
