I don’t really care for Guinness and I think Jameson is gross, so every year on St. Patrick’s Day I struggle to find something festive and delicious to drink. Enter the pousse-café. Basically a fancy name for a layered cocktail, the pousse-café began as an elegant digestif, one that could be savored layer by layer after a long, filling meal.
As long as you know the specific gravity of your liquids (heaviest goes on the bottom), you can stack them to your heart’s content, which is exactly what I did with this St. Patrick’s Day pousse-café. Vanilla vodka yields to Irish cream and a layer of vibrant créme de menthe provides the final flavor, leaving a lingering freshness on your palate.
Ingredients:
• green crème de menthe
• Baileys Irish Cream
• vanilla vodka, I used Stoli Vanil
Directions:
1. Gather your ingredients. I used 1.5 oz of each liquor, but you can adjust depending on the size of your glass or how thick you’d like the striations to be. You’ll need to use relatively small, narrow glasses to achieve this affect without using a ton of booze.
2. Pour the crème de menthe into the bottom of your glass.
3. Take a bar spoon (or a regular spoon if you don’t have one), flip it upside down and place it up against the inside of the glass. Very slowly, pour the Baileys onto the back of the spoon, so it runs softly down the side of the glass and onto the crème de menthe without disturbing the surface tension.
4. Rinse the spoon then repeat with the vodka.
5. Cheers!
