The Recipe Room

A couple of years ago, I got to watch a lot of Arsenal home games at Emirates Stadium in north London. A cousin of mine had season tickets but spent most of the year traveling on business and kindly offered me his seat. One Saturday, Nicklas Bendtner, a Danish forward who played for the gunners, changed his shirt number from 26 to 52. That same season, he scored an amazing goal against Liverpool in the Carling Cup. From then on, he was known as “the bomber”, and the B-52 cocktail became an Islington favourite.

The B-52 is a layered shot made with a coffee liqueur, Irish cream and orange liqueur. Although there are special machines that can prepare a B-52, most bartenders rely on their traditional, hand-made preparation. This method is called “building”, as opposed to blending or shaking.

The coffee liqueur is served first, because it is the thickest of the layers and will sit on the bottom of the shot glass. Next, the Irish cream is poured very slowly on top. Some people use the back of a cold bar spoon to help them. Finally, the orange liqueur is served atop the Irish cream, also using a spoon.

What I really love about the B-52 is that when you start drinking it, the ingredients mix together, and yet you get a beautiful and very distinct taste of each one of them in your mouth. The aftertaste is definitely sweet, due to the orange liqueur. Ideally, it is a drink to have in a bar in the Alps on a cold winter evening while playing cards with friends. It would also go really well with this orange and plum cake.

In Islington, the B-52 cocktail fever has almost disappeared. A few weeks ago, a bartender in a pub on Northampton Park admitted that the first time someone ordered the drink in 2009, he hadn´t a clue what it was. He also said it is visually one of the hardest drinks to get right. And even though it is no longer the rage, I do occasionally order one just to remind me what a season both Arsenal and I had in 2009.

Tags: B-52, bailey´s, cocktail, coffee liqueur, Irish cream, orange liqueur

This entry was posted on Friday, 20 July, 2012 at 3:11 pm by Jeremy Larson and is filed under Less than 30 minutes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the feed RSS 2.0. You can leave a comment, or make a trackback from your own blog.