We first tasted Coole Swan Irish Liqueur last year when we attended Fare Plate in New York City. It is a beautiful creamy white with a slightly lighter taste than Bailey’s. While I still love Bailey’s, try out a bottle of Coole Swan for a change up.

Our new ice cream maker has been an inspiration: I have made peppermint chip, “healthy” avocado dark chocolate, and now my own Coole Swan Ice Cream. This ice cream goes fast in our house, so be warned: it is highly addictive stuff!

Recipe
Note: recipe is formulated for a 1 ½ quart ice cream maker. We bought the inexpensive Cuisinart ICE-21, which we are pleased with so far.

Ingredients
• 1 cup of whole milk
• 2/3 cup of granulated sugar
• A scant 2 cups of heavy cream
• ½ cup chilled Irish cream liqueur (preferably Coole Swan)

Whisk the milk and sugar together in a medium sized bowl until the sugar dissolves. Add in the heavy cream and whisk gently (you do not want to thicken the cream at all). Cover and chill in the fridge for 2 hours or more.

After at least 2 hours, set up and turn on the ice cream maker (look at your ice cream maker instructions/ ours must be running before pouring in the mixture).

Gently pour in the milk, sugar, heavy cream mixture. Run the maker for 15-20 minutes. Add in the chilled Coole Swan during the last two minutes. Alcohol impedes the freezing process, so you need to add it towards the end. My ice cream was fairly soft and some of the liqueur did not mix in, so I poured it into a chilled glass container, stirred it and popped it quickly into the freezer for a few more hours. It was perfect!

Easy to eat on its own or try in one of the recipes below!

Swan Sundae

• 2 scoops of Coole Swan Ice cream
• A dollop of hot fudge sauce
• A dollop of whipped cream (Using a handheld mixer, I whipped up the leftover heavy cream from the recipe and it worked great.)
• Sprinkle of chopped pistachio nuts

Arrange all of the ingredients in a bowl and serve immediately.

Coole Swan Affogato

• Strong ice coffee (I made espresso, added cold filtered water and then chilled it. Cold brew would also work well)
• A scoop of Coole Swan Ice cream
• A dollop of whipped cream
• Generous sprinkle of cinnamon (delicious with the Coole Swan- amazing together!)

Scoop the ice cream into a glass and pour the coffee over it (works with hot espresso too). Put the whip cream on and sprinkle the cinnamon over it.

With spring well underway, we thought it was appropriate to celebrate with a refreshing, easily-made cocktail. This is a slightly different version than the classic Stone Fence, a colonial-era drink noted for being a favorite of Ethan Allen. Word has it that he and “the Green Mountain Boys” filled up on a mix of rum and hard cider the night before attacking the British-controlled Fort Ticonderoga.

We’ve added some orange bitters and a nice helping of cinnamon sugar around the rim of the glass, which makes it a sweet and tart treat. We also changed the name to Stone Wall in recognition of a song that Conor’s Uncle Jack used to sing, “the Old Stone Wall.”

Ingredients

• Good quality rum
• Hard cider
• Orange bitters
• Cinnamon sugar

Nothing beats Irish Cream Liqueur and milk. However, we were looking for something that cut down on the milk (since it does not always agree with Libby), and we also wanted a bit of a twist on this classic combination. So we came up with the idea of using almond milk and some cinnamon. Turned out absolutely delicious we are happy to report.

Ingredients

• 2 ounces of Irish Creme Liqueur (Baileys works, of course. I love Kerrygold Irish Creme and Coole Swan, but they are not as easy to come by).
• 2 ounces of Vanilla Almond Cinnamon Milk (see instructions below)
• 2 tsps of sugar
• 1 1/2 Tbs of cinnamon
• Splash of Irish Whiskey

Tired of the blasé condiments you pick up at the grocery store? Has it even dawned on you that there are other options you could choose to top off that burger or dip fries into? Irish Food Revolution has added the rich smoothness of Guinness Stout into a sweet and spicy ketchup that is a perfect complement to anything you’d eat with regular ketchup. The results are full-flavored, sweet and spicy and you probably have most of what you need already on hand.

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• ½ onion, diced
• ⅓ cup granulated sugar

• ¼ cup brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons dijon mustard
• ¼ teaspoon ground pepper
• ¼ cup malt vinegar

• ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper (reduce or omit if you don’t like spicy heat)
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• ½ teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 16 oz. can fire roasted diced tomatoes
• ¾ cup Guinness Stout

Everything you need to make Guinness Ketchup


All of the ingredients beginning to simmer


Ready to blend

Tired of limp French toast? Can you power through a day without the sausage and bacon? You bet you can. And our version is hearty enough that you won’t even miss the meat. We used our own brown soda bread rather than the pale white excuse for bread that passes the muster most elsewhere. Throw on your favorite toppings and you’ll have a breakfast fit for a marathoner.

Ingredients
2-4 slices thick cut brown soda bread
2-3 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon cinnamon
⅛ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon brown sugar
½ cup milk
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs

Pictured toppings
Real maple syrup
Strawberries (optional)
Banana slices (optional)
Powdered sugar (optional)

Place a frying pan on medium heat.

Whisk two eggs until frothy. Stir milk, vanilla, cinnamon, brown sugar and salt into egg mixture. Stir or whisk well to combine.

Soak bread slices in egg mixture, flipping with tongs until bread is pretty well saturated — a minute or so per slice. Set soaked bread on a plate.

Spoon 2 tablespoons of butter into the frying pan and heat until melted, tilting the pan or using a spatula to coat the bottom of the pan. Place soaked bread in pan and cook until underside is browned, flipping and repeating with the second side. Add more butter if desired or if you’re making more than two slices.

Serve warm with plenty of real maple syrup and/or any combination of powdered sugar, fruit, berries or jam.

The egg mix ready to combine


Ready to soak


Soaking the brown soda bread


Frying the soaked bread

Under categories, I’ve labeled this Strawberry shrub as quick and easy. Though technically it takes several days, the prep is about as quick and easy as it gets, so I feel vindicated.

Let’s start with the definition of a shrub. Some of you might know a shrub as a mix of fruit juice and liquor, but vinegar is a fine substitute and it’s what I’m using here. I like to have some around at parties so teetotalers have something interesting from which to choose. It not only makes a refreshing soda type beverage, but it can also be an ingredient in alcoholic drinks as well (sangria, gin fizz) or in salad dressings, desserts or even sweet and savory dishes.

Shrubs have been around for centuries and were originally a way of preserving summer flavors through the winter. The two mainstays of this basic shrub syrup are sugar and vinegar. Obviously the type of vinegar you choose will affect the end results, but for me, the fun comes in choosing the flavor. For ease I’ve chosen fresh strawberries. You can try substituting other flavors as well, like citrus - lemon/orange (avoid lime); peach; apple, berries, or combinations thereof. Then try to pare a vinegar to match your flavor, apple cider vinegar for apple shrub, for example.

Keeping a ratio of 1-1-1 is the trick. I’ve used 2 cups of strawberries, 2 cups of sugar and 2 cups of vinegar - simple. And you won’t believe the results - unique and delicious. You can vary the strength by adding it to seltzer, which is my favorite way to use this. You can have anything from mildly flavored to strong and sweet with a hint of tart. The vinegar indeed comes through, but it is remarkably refreshing with the sugar to balance things out.

The acid in the vinegar helps to preserve the syrup, but it should still be kept in the fridge nonetheless.

Ingredients

• 2 cups strawberries (I used frozen for convenience. They’re generally picked at their peak and frozen soon afterward.)
• 2 cups raw sugar (Feel free to use refined, but the hint of molasses gives it a little more interest for me.)
• 1¼ cup balsamic vinegar
• ¾ cup apple cider vinegar

Strawberries mixed with sugar


What strawberries and sugar look like after two days


Ready to mix the syrup with the vinegar


Bottled and ready to add flavor at a moment’s notice

One of the golden guidelines of making pizzas is not to overload them. But you have to know when to throw the rules out the window. Case in point: our overloaded potato and garlic pizza. This isn’t your cookie cutter, corner store pizza. It’s a savory sweet concoction unlike anything you’ve tasted. It comes topped with crispy potatoes, sautéed red onions, sharp cheddar cheese, plenty of garlic and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar glaze.

The secret to the potatoes is to grate and soak them to reduce the amount of sticky starch. Grating allows you to take only what you bite from a slice and not half the toppings, while their color adds to the pizza’s visual pop. Sautéing the onions also creates a sweet base for the potatoes to play off, as does the balsamic glaze. The cheddar cheese? Well, what better to complement potatoes?

Ingredients

• 2 medium/large red potatoes
• 1 large red onion
• Extra virgin olive oil
• 6 cloves minced garlic
• 1 package prepared pizza dough (store bought works fine, but remove from fridge a half hour before you use so it has a chance to warm up a bit)
• 3 oz. grated sharp cheddar cheese (Please grate your own. The pre-packaged stuff just isn’t the same.)
• Balsamic glaze (available in most vinegar sections)

Soaking the potatoes


Small slices, but no need to dice the onions


These are looking ready


Make sure the soaked potatoes are as dry as you can get them


Extra virgin olive oil, garlic and onions added


Ready to bake


Hot out of the oven


Fresh chives sprinkled on top