Description
Easy Irish coffee is the perfect drink to help you celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. Or, for any time you need to cozy up with a warm drink that’s spiked with Irish whiskey. So good!
Ingredients
Cream topping (for 3 to 4 servings)
- 3/4 cup heavy whipping cream
- 1 to 1 1/2 tablespoon real maple syrup
- 1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
For the drink (1 serving)
- 1 to 2 tablespoons real maple syrup
- 1 1/2 to 2 ounces Irish whiskey (we like Jameson)
- 1/2 to 2/3 cup strong, freshly brewed coffee (see notes)
Instructions
- Brew the coffee: Use your preferred method to brew the coffee. I suggest brewing it a little stronger than you normally do since it will be “watered” down with other things. We personally brew about 4 cups of coffee, because that’s the size of our coffee maker (we don’t always use all of it, though). You will need about 1/2 to 2/3 cup of coffee for 1 drink. You can adjust the amount of coffee to coordinate with the amount of Irish coffee drinks you plan to make. My advice, it’s always better to have a little extra on hand, ready to go, than to have to make more, (especially if you’re serving these to guests). Keep the coffee hot, while you prepare the remainder of the recipe.
- Whip the cream: Add the heavy whipping cream to a large mixing bowl, along with the maple syrup, and vanilla. Whip the cream using an electric hand mixer. Alternately you could use a stand mixer, but it’s not necessary. You want to whip the cream just until soft peaks form, you don’t want stiff peaks to form, otherwise it makes the cream harder to drink with the coffee. You know that you’ve achieved soft peaks when the whisks leave tracks in the cream, and when you pull the whisks out of the cream, the cream flops over (stiff peaks is when the cream holds the shape of a peak), the cream should be thick enough to cling to a spoon. If you accidently overwhip the cream to stiff peaks, simply stir a teaspoon of cream in at a time to thin it out. Pop the cream in freezer until you’re ready to use it. Note: you don’t want the whipped cream to freeze, you just pop it in there while preparing the rest of the drinks so it gets a little extra cold. It’s a nice contrast to the hot coffee. Don’t allow the whipped cream to sit in the freezer for longer than 20 minutes.
- Warm the glasses (optional step, but recommended): Heat a tea kettle filled with water (or, heat the water in the microwave). Once the water is hot (it doesn’t need to be boiling), pour the water into the serving glasses (see notes about glasses), and allow the hot water to sit in the glasses for 1 to 2 minutes. Pour the water out and dry off any water that has spilled on the outside of the glass. Note: The purpose of this step is to keep the coffee nice and warm, since it cools down quickly due to the extra liquids we add to it. This step is ideal if your kitchen is cold.
- Mix: To the warmed serving glasses, add the maple syrup (for non-coffee drinkers – like me – I suggest adding the full 2 tablespoons of maple syrup), along with the Irish whiskey, and about 1/2 to 2/3 cup of the hot coffee (leaving about 1 1/2 to 2 inches of room at the top of the glass for the cream layer). Note: The measurements for the drink above, are written for 1 drink – you can easily make more than one drink at a time by measuring out the maple syrup, whiskey, and coffee into each glass. Use a spoon to stir these ingredients together.
- Add the cream on top: Remove the whipped cream from the freezer. Use a spoon to carefully spoon the whipped cream on top of each coffee you are making, the cream should float on top nicely – you will use about 2 to 3 large heaping spoonfuls of the cream, until the cream reaches the top of the glass. Very important: do NOT stir the cream into the coffee. They should remain in separate layers.
- Serve: Serve the Irish coffees immediately. The hot coffee/whiskey mixture is drunk through the cold cream layer. It’s a real treat!
Notes
decaf coffee: We always make these using decaf coffee, since we are both sensitive to caffeine, and always drink them at night. It’s up to you, but keep this in mind, if caffeine is a concern.
type of coffee: You want to use medium, or dark roast, without any flavors like hazelnut, or whatever. You just want a simple, plain, strong coffee for this recipe.
maple syrup: Traditionally, Irish coffees are made using brown sugar, but I find the maple syrup makes this drink just a little bit easier to make since the maple syrup is easier to stir into the coffee. Make sure to use real maple syrup, and not pancake syrup since we are using only a few ingredients, we want each one to be at it’s best.
Whipped cream: You may have extra whipped cream leftover for this recipe, depending on how many drinks you make. I would prefer that you have extra leftover, rather than need to make it again. If you do have some leftover here are your options: 1) you can either store it in the fridge for future Irish coffees. If it gets a little flat, simply give it a 30 second whisk with your electric hand mixer. 2) you can freeze the whipped cream to use for other recipes. See my whipped cream post for more info.
make ahead options: I do suggest making the coffee fresh, and not using leftover coffee. However, you could whip the cream up to several hours in advance and give it a little re-fresh by whipping it for 3o seconds, if it gets a little flat.
prep time: Once the whipped cream is made, and the coffee is brewed, making the individual Irish coffee drinks only takes 5 minutes (ish) give-or-take how many drinks you are making.
Irish coffee glasses: I use an 8 ounce Irish coffee mug. You could also use any other 8 ounce mugs you have. I do recommend that they are clear, if possible, for the presentation factor. In Ireland, I also had Irish coffees served to me in small, stemmed wine glasses, so that would work too. I wouldn’t recommend using a glass that’s larger than 8 ounces, however, since the drink is kind of decadent. (Here is a link to a set of glasses similar to mine)
For a traditional Irish coffee recipe: For a more authentic IRish coffee recipe, see this post. (Keep in mind, this is a very old post, so it’s not polished, but it has a fun strory about my time in IReland, and good info about how to make an authentic cup of Irish coffee). No, this recipe isn’t exactly authentic (read more about this in the blog post, above.
