MxMo LV: Some Like it Hot: The Round-Up.

So when I cooked up (cooked up - see what I did there?) the idea for this month's Mixology Monday, Houston was in the grips of something curiously akin to winter. For a couple of weeks, the temperature dipped below forty degrees, and I laid low and drank hot buttered beer and dreamed of sangria.

Winter didn't last long, however, and now that Mixology Monday has come around it's a sunny 75 degrees, the blueberries are in bloom, and I'm thinking about planting tomatoes. Normally I love Houston's bizarre, balmy weather, but I have to say that today I'm a little jealous of those of you in the frozen north. What better pick-me-up on a cold day than one of these delicious hot drinks? I might even make one to enjoy by the pool.


For Elana over at Stir and Strain, hot alcoholic drinks conjure up memories of dad giving her hot whiskey for childhood illnesses. Love it. Her Hot Buttered Warm-Up is made with a cardamom, vanilla, and muscovado sugar butter (I started drooling when I read that) melted into black tea with bourbon, lemon juice, and amaretto. An unusual flavor combo, and one that I am dying to try.


Frederic of cocktail virgin slut reaches waaay back to a cocktail book from 1867 to bring us the Locomotive. As he says, "since these early railway vehicles used heat to generate steam to propel them, having a hot drink named after them was not very surprising". The recipe, though, is pretty surprising, at least to us moderns - it's wine, sweetened with honey and orange liqueur, and thickened with egg yolk. Given my affinity for bizarre combinations and old recipes, I'm happy to hear this one was a hit.

Jordan, from Chemistry of the Cocktail, makes a hot chocolate cocktail with dark chocolate and a chocolate and spice-infused rum. I'm just starting to experiment with spicy/chocolate combinations myself, and I have to say...this sounds amazing.


Rowen over at the Fogged in Lounge tries out the somewhat salaciously-titled Vanilla Whiskey Skin. It's a toddy made with rye, vanilla syrup, and lemon peel. Yum. Vanilla in a toddy...that opens up a whole new realm of possibilities. Also, I like your backdrop of classic novels.


Doug of the Pegu Blog offers up a Hot Buttered Mai Tai. The first time I opened this link, my response was something like...whaaat? The Mai Tai was one of the first drinks I ever made, and it's still one of my favorites. But hot? And with butter? Then I remembered that I had a similar response to the hot buttered beer, which turned out to be delicious. Thankfully Doug gives us detailed directions for making the most of this "cosmic convergence".


Speaking of hot tiki drinks...Layne over at the Ace Saloon brings us the Heaven's on Fire, inspired by a Don the Beachcomber recipe from 1937. And the ingredients do sound heavenly. Start with butter, honey and coconut...add rum, allspice dram, velvet falernum, and milk. Drool. (P.S. Layne says that he loves mulled wine, but his friends are sort of meh about it. You should meet my friends. They drink mulled wine like it's going out of style.)


Dave of the Barman Cometh makes some Glogg, the traditional Scandinavian mulled wine, to ward off an unexpected chill in San Francisco. (Because if anybody knows how to make a warming drink, it's the Scandinavians.) I've made lots of mulled wine but never glogg, and I'm dying to try it after seeing this recipe. Did I mention that it calls for lighting a Brandy syrup on fire? That is all kinds of awesome. And is that a christmas-tree garnish?


And while we're setting things on fire, there's DJ Hawaiian Shirt's Flaming Coffee Grog. So many things about this drink blow my mind - it's a tiki drink with coffee, for one. And then there's the part where you make a mixture of rum, orange liqueur, citrus peels, and cloves and set it on FIRE. You're supposed to spoon the flaming mixture into the coffee, "where presumably the flames will soon extinguish". So, so great.


Then we have Dennis, from A Drink on the Rocks. His contribution, the Pirate's Gold, is also tiki-esque, but with...a beer syrup? And chocolate bitters? How strange. How wonderful. Make me one, please.


Fearghas lives in Scotland and has tasted the Pimms #3, two reasons I am terribly jealous of him. He and his buddies have a whole blog about gin, and this is their very first MxMo. Welcome to the party! His contribution is, appropriately, a Hot Gin Toddy.


More hot gin! (It's not too often you get to say that.) Marc of A Drinkers Peace, faced with a winter snowfall and unfortunate case of the sniffles, turns to an 1888 recipe for a hot gin sling. Genever, sugar, fresh ground nutmeg, and lemon are warming and soothing.


Elizabeth over at Mix n' Sip is another first-timer. Welcome Elizabeth! She offers up her Devonshire Clotted Cream Tea Cocktail, an alcoholic twist on the traditional English afternoon drink, along with some fascinating history of the tradition of teatime.


Tony Harion and the Mixing Bar team came to this little party all the way from Brazil. Being that it's 95 degrees in Brazil right now, the team bends the rules a little and makes a hot drink, served cold. Their submission is the Maria Carioca, which is...a spicy tomato drink made with passion fruit. That's right - passion fruit. I am in awe. Also I need to be drinking one of these like, right now.


Ed of Wordsmithing Pantagruel makes a Caramel Apple Toddy with applejack, Bénédictine, and caramel syrup. Deeelish. He also offers up some links about flash heating ale with a red-hot poker, the legit, old-fashioned way to make hot drinks. I've always wanted to try this, although I'm a little worried that my fireplace isn't all that clean.


The Alpha Cook offers up the Bull's Milk, a hot drink with an off-putting name but a very appealing photo. Dark rum, cognac, vanilla milk, and maple syrup? I feel warm just thinking about it.


And finally, there's my humble submission...a spiced pear mulled wine. I aimed to make two different kinds of mulled wine, but then decided that the second one would be better off as a sangria. Fortunately, sangria season is about ten months out of the year around here.

Thanks to everyone who participated! Please please let me know if I left out your entry - my inbox is currently a smorgasbord of wild and wonderful hot drinks, and I wouldn't want anyone to have gotten lost in the shuffle.

Thanks also to Paul Clarke, our benevolent founder. See you all next time!

MxMo LV: Pear Spice Mulled Wine

Whenever I have parties and I do hot drinks, I always make at least one batch of mulled wine, and it's always a big hit. Since this month's Mixology Monday theme (selected by yours truly) is Some Like it Hot, I thought I'd take a stab at an original mulled wine.

At first I thought of doing an apple mulled wine, since apple and spices go so well together, but some poking about on the internets revealed that lots of other people had already beat me to it. So why not...a pear mulled wine?


Pear Spice Mulled Wine
1 bottle red wine
1/4 cup brandy
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 pear, cored and sliced
1/2 cup pear nectar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 whole anise star
12 whole cloves
3 cinnamon sticks
1/2 orange, cut into slices

Combine all the ingredients in an appropriately-sized pot. Cook over medium-low, stirring occasionally, for 25 minutes.

Verdict: Winner. Delicious, spicy, fruity. I found myself completely unable to stop drinking it. And after you've drunk all the wine, the pears make for a delicious and dangerously addictive snack.


And, just because I can't leave well enough alone, I decided to try something really innovative: a mulled wine with...balsamic vinegar? Yeah, you heard that right. Some cursory google searches indicated that balsamic vinegar, pears and cinnamon might be good together, so I gave it a whirl.

Balsamic Pear Mulled Wine
1 bottle red wine
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup eau-de-vie poire william
1 pear, cored and sliced
1/2 orange, cut into slices
4 cinnamon sticks

Verdict: This is really, really interesting, and not in an entirely bad way. The balsamic and pear flavors complement one another and bring out the nuances in each. I can't help thinking, though, that this would probably better as a sangria. As in, it smelled awfully good before I cooked it for half an hour. Come summer, you can bet I'll be trying this one again.

Buttered Beere...A Little Taste of History.

One day, while browsing liqurious, I came across something that immediately grabbed my attention...a 400-year-old recipe for hot buttered beer.

Now, if you take a look at this recipe, there are a few things you will notice right away:

1. Hot beer? Weird.
2. Beer with butter? Weirder.
3. Beer with egg? UNPOSSIBLE.

But all the same, I knew I had to try it. Because:

1. I am a sucker for weird flavor combinations.
2. As a devoted fan of Harry Potter, I was pretty psyched that there was really such a thing as butterbeer. (Sure, there are plenty of other recipes floating around the internet for butterbeer, but this one is the real thing. IT IS 400 YEARS OLD.)
3. 423 years old, to be exact. When this recipe was first published (in "The Good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin”), Elizabeth I ruled England, America had just recently gotten around to being discovered, and the island of Manhattan looked like this. It would be like a little flavor window into the past. A little piece of history happening in a pot in my circa 1978 kitchen.

Seeing as Houston was in the grips of an unusual cold snap (below freezing temperatures! for several days!), I saw my opportunity. Last Friday a little party gathered at my house to sample this bizarre, centuries-old concoction. I used Old Speckled Hen, a brand of "real ale" that's available here in the states.


So of course there's the big question...what did it taste like? My compatriots displayed varying degrees of enthusiasm for the hot buttered beer, ranging from "eh" to "omg". I think a few people were turned off by the fact that it was so filling - I mean, 12 tbsp of butter is...a lot of butter. Personally, I thought it tasted like hot, buttered heaven. Like liquid french toast - and also a little like beer.

Bonus: it's been two days, and my kitchen still smells like butter and spices. Mmm. Those Tudor cooks were really on to something.

Baby, It's Cold Outside.

And cold weather calls for a hot drink. I give you...

The Bourbon Hot Toddy
(adapted from a book called The Art of the Bar, one of my faves.)

1 cinnamon stick
1 whole anise star
5 whole cloves
1 tsp texas wildflower honey (look, local ingredients!)
1/2 cup boiling water
1.5 oz bourbon
slice of lemon

Add the cinnamon, anise, cloves, and honey to a heat-proof snifter. (Or a coffee mug, which will not be as pretty as a snifter, but will work equally well.) (I find "snifter" to be a very, very funny word. Also: how can you tell if your snifter is heat-proof? You could do what I did, which is: pour boiling water into it and see what happens.) Top with the boiling water and stir to melt the honey. Add the bourbon; squeeze the lemon slice and drop into the glass.


Hot, spiced bourbon. Delicious. Warming. Genius.

And, for those not booze-inclined:

The Hot Tea Toddy
This is the very first virgin drink to grace the pages of the Backyard Bartender, and some credit goes to Jen, who inspired me to make this. Black tea is one of those things - like champagne, and ginger - that mysteriously pairs wells with everything. Here, the honey adds a little sweetness, and the spices give the tea some extra warmth on a cold winter night.

1 cinnamon stick
1 whole anise star
5 whole cloves
1 tsp honey
1 cup boiling water
1 bag Earl Grey tea (any black tea should work, but I tried this with earl grey because...that's what I had.)
slice of lemon

Add the spices and tea bag to a mug and cover with boiling water. Infuse for 3-4 minutes and then remove the tea bag. Add the honey and a squeeze of lemon, if desired.