So called because it’s thick enough to carve a face and stick a candle in it.

Everything in this glass is thicker than Sherri Shepherd at a Greek history lecture and twice as pumpkiny as Linus. To paraphrase KISS, “You wanted the pie, you got the pie!!” (Come to think of it, wouldn’t KISS be like eight times better if that was their thing?)

Anyway. The Jack-O’-Lantern Martini at the Palms’ N9NE Steakhouse and Nove Italiano elevates the pie-in-a-glass approach to pumpkin cocktails to new heights. To wit: If you leave this drink under a heating lamp too long, you’re coming out with baked goods.

If you want to try this at home, be prepared to put in some work. It starts with lead mixologist Dave Herlong’s pumpkin puree mix: Take a 15-ounce can of puree, add two ounces of Bailey’s, two ounces of butterscotch schnapps, an ounce of Goldschlager cinnamon liqueur, a scoop of N9NE’s burnt caramel ice cream, ground maple sugar, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg and a vanilla bean. Got all that? Good.

Now you’re going to shake up two ounces of that with an ounce of vodka and an ounce of Harlem liqueur, strain it into a graham cracker-rimmed cocktail glass and top it with a dollop from a pastry bag of vanilla bean butterscotch whipped cream — 12 ounces of whipping cream, one vanilla bean and an ounce of butterscotch schnapps. Yes, even the whipped cream has booze in it. It’s also so thick it’s practically frosting and you will more or less want it on every dessert you ever eat. Or straight from the bag. Either way.

“I wanted it to be really sweet because when it hits the Harlem the herbaciousness and the citrus qualities, almost like a burnt orange quality in the Harlem, really go well,” Herlong said. “Instead of having dessert, have a cocktail for dessert.”

Harlem is a new herbal liqueur from Ketel One that we’d compare to a more floral, lighter, more sophisticated and complex (read: better) Jaegermeister. Think of it as something to graduate to when you get out of the frat house.

It makes for an interesting component to the Jack-O’-Lantern, because through all this delightfully thick pumpkin, you’ve got an underlying complexity that certainly doesn’t make it any less of a dessert drink, but takes just enough of an edge off the sweetness you know you’re still knocking back a cocktail. There’s a good amount of vanilla underneath, especially when the whipped cream gets involved. Unlike BOA’s excellent Harvest Moon, we didn’t get much here in the way of citrus, but despite similar amounts of liquor, this one had the more noticeable burn going down.

Of course, when even the garnish comes with built-in sauce, that helps too.

By Jason Scavone

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