Burly but Sweet Irish Coffee

 -What you need to get through another family holiday.-

We, like any barely functioning individual, like to mix our uppers with our downers. While ice cream sprinkled with a bit of Prozac is keen, an Irish coffee is by and far much more accessible and doesn’t require a prescription.

The key to a really fantastic Irish coffee is brown sugar simple syrup - the musky flavor of the molasses in the brown sugar brings out the burly, peaty flavors of both the coffee and the whiskey. It’s blended in both the barely whipped cream and the coffee itself ensuring a properly stout coffee cocktail. It takes a few extra steps then your everyday Irish coffee, but the results speak for themselves.

A special thanks to Rachel Valley, who took this amazing photograph. If you're in the Sacramento area and need an excellent food photographer, I highly recommend her. 

For the Brown Sugar Simple Syrup Makes
3 cups of syrup 

WHAT YOU’LL NEED…
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup water

WHAT YOU’LL DO…
Place both ingredients in a saucepan and warm over medium-high heat until the sugar is dissolved. Allow to cool before using.


For the Brown Sugar Whipped Cream 
Makes plenty of whipped cream 

WHAT YOU’LL NEED… 
1 cup heavy whipping cream
¼ cup brown sugar simple syrup

WHAT YOU’LL DO… 
Place the whipping cream in a bowl and whisk the utter hell out of it. While you do so, slowly pour in the brown sugar simple syrup in a thin stream. Be careful not to overwhisk. You don’t want a super-thick cream with stiff peaks, but rather a soft cream your can easily spoon out or even pour.


For the Irish Coffee 
Makes 1 Irish Coffee 

WHAT YOU’LL NEED... 
6 ounces freshly brewed coffee
1.5 ounces Irish whiskey
.5 ounce of brown sugar simple syrup
 brown sugar whipped cream for topping

WHAT YOU’LL DO… 
Place the coffee, whiskey, and simple syrup in a glass and fill almost to the top, leaving about ½-inch of headspace. Fill the rest of the glass with way too much of the brown sugar whipped cream. Indulge immediately.


VARIATIONS 
Bailey’s Irish Coffee: Use Bailey’s Irish Cream in place of the brown sugar simple syrup for the whipped cream. A bit more liquor with your liquor is never a bad thing.

The Baby Urge: Pear Coffee Cake

-Cake accompanied by coffee and the sound of your biological clock running down.-

As it stands now, and much to the never ending dissappointment of my parents, neither BF nor I have any desire to have children.

My parents still see me as the most likely of their three children - all boys - to provide them with grandbabies. They have made this extremely clear to me. The last time my mother came up to visit she was polite enough not to bring it up around BF, but the moment he left to take out the trash?

"So, have you two considered having kids?"

"What!? No. Not yet. I don't know. We still want to finish our educations. Get our careers started. Buy a house. Travel..." I replied.

"I bought my first house when I was twenty-three, and I had your older brother by then. Plus, I was going to grad school," she explains matter of factly as she sips her iced tea.

My Mom: high school track star, debutante, honor roll, and general perfectionist. Currently, in her mid-sixties, she's now retired, traveling the world at least twice a year, and a marathon bicylcist. Incredibly admirable, but she's one of those excrutiating perfect examples that is nigh-impossible to live up to if you're in any way related to her as my siblings and cousins have lamented about her and her brother with his three Ph D's.

-It's the main problem with having successful parents.-

"Traveling with a kid is hard, mom. You know that. You took children to Spain and we were little nightmares."

"No you weren't!" she lies to herself, or maybe she really doesn't remember it that way. "It's hard, but if anything I proved you can do it," she firmly asserts.

"Well, that was you. Plus, I'd probably rather adopt."

"But sweetie," she pleads, "you have such good genes!" It's an semi-narcissistic compliment and argument both my parents make whenever I bring up the adoption idea.

"We're gay. Doing the turkey baster thing is expensive and the mother has rights so it doesn't always work out. Plus, there are plenty of older kids in foster care who need a home. If we adopt it'll be a kid around six to ten. Plus, YOU adopted! Remember?"

"That's true, but you don't get to name the child!" mom wails.

"So?" I say. I've named a few cats and they never come when you call them. From what I hear children are the same once they go past the age of seven.

(Given, if I could, I do have baby names picked out just in case. Aaron or Noel for a boy. Claire or Viola for a girl. Family names for middle names, of course, those being Michael, Brandon, or Suzanne. Else the family string me up for neglecting tradition.)

"Doesn't BF have a sister who could provide an egg?"

"MOM! No! Lord, dad, asked the same thing last week. It's not like asking for a cup of sugar."

"But, honey, you'll miss the best part. The baby stage," she sighs and I can tell she's remembering the days when she was a new mom three times. I think she's mentally blocked the parts where my older and younger brothers were tiny terrors. (By her admittance I was the perfect child.)