Pour Yourself a Drink: Angel's Kiss

Alex Van Buren
·Food Features Editor
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Illustration credit: Jennifer Fox

Whether you loathe it or love it, today is Valentine’s Day. Maybe you’re headed home from work and bracing for—or embracing, as the case may be—the holiday itself.

Have an Angel’s Kiss when you get home. Sipped solo or with a beloved, it’s the sort of simple, sweet cocktail that sings. Crème de cacao, brandy, and cream are ingredients with which no faults can be found. Layer them together in a pony glass—a one-ounce vessel with tapered sides popular in the Jazz Age, when this drink was in its heyday—or carefully pour them into a little juice glass.

The layers of an Angel’s Kiss are as delicate as can be, rising from night to day, black to white, and garnished with a cherry. If only all love affairs could be so clear-cut, and so pretty.

Angel’s Kiss

Recipe adapted from Dale DeGroff, The Craft of the Cocktail

1 part crème de cacao

1 part brandy

1 part cream, lightly whipped

Cherry, for garnish

Carefully pour ingredients, in order, over the back of a spoon held against the inside of a pony glass or another small glass. Pierce a maraschino cherry with a toothpick or straw and perch it on top of the glass.