Hot Buttered Rum Cider Is Our New Favorite Holiday Mashup
Elizabeth Stark is the blogger behind Brooklyn Supper and a former Yahoo FoodBlogger of the Week. Below, she dreams up a decadent cross between hot buttered rum and mulled apple cider. It’s a new classic!
Photos: Elizabeth Stark
With a history that stretches back to colonial times in the United States, hot buttered rum is a wintertime classic. Traditionally made with butter, sugar, dark rum, and boiling water, the simplest preparations will have you swirl the ingredients in a mug and call it a day — though the butter tends to separate out with this method, leaving a greasy aftertaste.
Happily, a few simple steps will transform the standard drink into an exceptional cold weather libation. Using a mixer to cream butter and sugar ahead of time, along with spices like nutmeg, cinnamon, and clove, the drink becomes a more cohesive, complex beverage minus the butter slick.
And because a drink made with sugar, butter, and rum is hardly austere, I took things a step further by adding hot apple cider in place of water. The resulting cocktail has a layered, tempting sweetness and an almost dangerous drinkability.
Hot Buttered Rum Cider
Serves 1
1 tablespoon chilled compound butter (recipe below)
1 ½ ounces dark rum
½ cup hot apple cider
Cinnamon stick for garnish
Add a tablespoon of compound butter to the bottom a mug, followed by 1 ½ ounces dark rum. Top off with ½ cup hot apple cider and stir gently. Garnish with a cinnamon stick. Serve immediately.
Compound Butter
Makes enough for 12 drinks
8 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
¼ teaspoon freshly ground cloves
Pinch of sea salt
In a large bowl, and using either a hand-held beater or a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter, brown sugar, spices, and sea salt until mixture is smooth and well combined, about 5 minutes.
Form compound butter into a log, wrap tightly with parchment paper and chill for 1 hour.
More winter drinks to warm up with:
8 Delicious Hot Chocolates You Must Make This Winter
Warm Up With 15 Hot Boozy Drinks
