I found this recipe in this year’s Good Housekeeping Christmas edition and slightly adapted it because I couldn’t find all the right ingredients in my country. The recipe makes about a liter and the friends I made it for managed to drink most of it before I had taken a picture! I don’t drink at all but I tried a teaspoon and even I figured it wasn’t that bad - even though there’s lots of alcohol in it, the cream softens the taste of the alcohol, and you can really taste the speculaas spices. Speculaas is a spice mixture that’s very popular for winter cookies in the Netherlands - it’s a bit like American pumpkin spice or British mixed spice.
Ingredients:
- 75 gram raw cane sugar
- 2 cinnamon sticks, broken in pieces
- 3 cardamom pods, bruised
- 3 cloves
- 1 star anise
- pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
- 350 ml vodka ( I used Esbjaerg)
- 400 gr can of condensed milk to make dulce du leche
- 300 ml crème fleurette (French cream, 30% fat - the English recipe lists single cream which we don’t have here)
- pan with a lid
- sieve
- jug, 1 liter
- sterilized bottle, 1 liter
- Heat the sugar and 200 ml water in a small pan over low heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Add the spices and bring to the boil. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes.
- Remove from the heat, stir in the vodka and cover again. Set aside to infuse overnight.
- Boil the can of condensed milk in the pan of water for several hours to turn it into dulce de leche. Make sure it can’t boil dry because the can could explode.
- The next day, strain the spiced wodka through a fine sieve until it’s clear.
- Empty the dulce de leche into a jug, slowly whisk in the creme fleurette until it’s smooth.
- Slowly stir in the spiced vodka.
- Decant into the bottle.
Keep chilled. Before serving, shake the bottle as the cream will rise to the top. The original recipe said it should keep in the fridge for about a month, but that seems quite long for a product that contains fresh cream. I would try to drink it asap.
I categorized this as a cocktail, but it’s actually a liqueur. I figured drink would probably be a category for non-alcoholic drinks.
