Newsflash: Valentine’s Day is around the corner, which means there may be decadent, love-themed tasting menus or boxes of chocolates in your future. Rich foods and lots of sweets are pretty much a given this time of year, but Augusto Lino of Hungry Mother has a few suggestions for those who’d just as soon skip dessert or, even better, have it in liquid form.

Lino advises wrapping up your Valentine’s Day (or any night out, really) with a nightcap or two at home. After-dinner drinks can often be too sweet and too heavy but at Hungry Mother, Barry Maiden’s Southern restaurant in Cambridge, dessert cocktails are crafted with the same amount of care as the rest of the cocktail list and the menu. “It’s ever-evolving,” Lino says of the list. He works in tandem with the pastry chef to create cocktails that complement the dessert menu and vice versa. Lino’s after dinner line-up includes a few that don’t quite fit the traditional mold including, for example, the No. 20, made with sorghum syrup, chilled espresso and vodka.

But, Lino says, you don’t have to get that fancy right off the bat. He recommends that home bartenders start with a familiar spirit and branch out from there. A good place to begin – especially after a big, celebratory meal? Digestifs, which help your stomach process all the food you just ate. Amari, bittersweet Italian digestives that come in a range of flavors, can be added to after-dinner cocktails for a delicious, not-too-sweet twist. Try adding some of your favorite amaro to a Manhattan, Lino says. “Then you can take on a bigger project and try making a cocktail you haven’t had before.”

Try your hand at any of his suggestions below this Valentine’s Day to keep the romance going after your big night out, or if you just want to have a delicious cocktail at home.

#41
1 1/2 oz Amaro Meletti
1 1/2 oz Cognac
4 dashes Mole Bitters

Stir with ice and serve on the rocks.

Hot Buttered Rum with Steen’s Syrup
1 oz Abuelo 8 year old Rum
1 oz Blackstrap Rum (Hungry Mother uses Cruzan)
1/2 oz Steen’s Syrup
2 1/2 oz hot water
1 tablespoon butter (Hungry Mother’s is whipped with ground cinnamon, nutmeg and clove)

Blend all ingredients in a mug and stir until the syrup is dissolved. The butter can be allowed to melt (as opposed to stirred in).

Best Buddy
1 oz Campari
1 oz Rittenhouse Rye (or other high proof Rye Whiskey)
1 oz Cynar

Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.
(This one, good before or after dinner, is a variation on an Old Pal. It was invented to help Hungry Mother co-owner John Kessen raise funds for the Best Buddies Challenge, a 100 mile bike ride he’ll be undertaking in May. A portion of the proceeds will help support the non-profit in its efforts to enhance the lives of people with intellectual disabilities.)