Vegan Irish Cream

I've seen several recipes for making Bailey's Irish Cream vegan, but I'm not happy with many of them. I've had a couple of bad experiences with soy creamer curdling, they have too many ingredients (and weird ones too - instant coffee? Hazelnut flavoring?), or they just don't taste like Irish Cream. I don't (yet) have a vegan husband (he's working on that), but I wanted it to be something to encourage him to have the vegan kind and not buy the other stuff.

I think The Pinhook (and whoever hosts the Fiction Kitchen vegan brunches in Raleigh) needs to make the sweet version so people can pair it with the Joe Van Gogh Coffee. Or I'll make it and bring it to them.

$3 shots to pour in your coffee!!

Anyway...

I'm going to give two versions here... one for people who don't care for the sweetness, and another for people who need that sweetness (pictured).

UNSWEET

* 1 cup So-Delicious Coconut Milk***, Unsweetened (Has a Good Thickness for this recipe!)
* 1/3 cup Irish Whiskey
* 2 slightly rounded spoonfuls of sifted cocoa powder (you don't have to sift if you don't mind chunks)

* 1 tsp vanilla


Wisk, blend, or beat together. It gives you the smell of the Irish cream, but just not the sweet taste. Keep refrigerated!



SWEET
more like the non-vegan version
-- To the above, add:
* 1/3 cup Mimic Creme Sweetened Cream more if desired. See Note Below
* 1/4 cup Irish Whiskey
* You can make your cocoa powder spoonfuls more rounded, if desired. I didn't add any more at all though.

Follow the same directions as above. You can drink right away, but it thickens up overnight. The sweet version makes about one pint of Irish Cream.

I made this on Saturday night. On Sunday morning, I walked into the kitchen to find my omnivore husband pouring it into his morning coffee. He said, "This is almost exactly what real Irish Creams are." FYI: Vegan is more real than non-vegan.

***You can't taste the coconut when you're done with the recipe.

NOTE: Mimic Creme is in area Whole Foods stores. It was actually right underneath the So-Delicious Coconut milk at the Wade Avenue location, so it's not hard to find. And not too terribly expensive either. I'm using (some of?) the rest of my box in a vegan caramel recipe.

Some ideas about what you can do with leftover Irish Cream. Though I have been told that's blasphemy.