I like this time of year more and more as I get older. I’m not talking about the holiday season. That I’ve always loved, and actually the holidays seem to become a little more stressful and a little less joyful every year – but I’ll save that topic for another day. I’m talking about the time between the holidays, the normal, early winter days.

I typically approach winter with a feeling of dread. January and February are usually so HARD for me – it’s dark, the snow and the cold the past few years have been relentless, my skin gets so dry that I can’t sleep, and my emotions get all out of whack. Last year I tried to combat it with an end of January trip to the USVI, which helped a little, but February, and even March, to be honest, were brutal. Thankfully, we’ll be skipping a solid 6 weeks of that awful deep winter time this year – thanks to my job, it seems I’ve become a snowbird at a young age.

But December is a different story. I vividly remember walking home from work one night in mid-December last year – it was cold, but very bright. After I passed through the hubbub of Harvard Square, it suddenly felt deeply quiet, the kind of quiet that is rare in a city. The kind of quiet that I associate with being in the woods, with a soft blanket of snow reflecting the moon into the night. The moon was full, the trees, stripped of their leaves, left stark echos against the blue-black sky. And I realized, all at once, that I love that quiet, that stillness. It’s a stillness that only comes with true cold, with the earth settling into sleep. So there is a part of winter that I love, and it felt significant to me to recognize this, to embrace something I was dreading.

These past few weeks I’ve been experiencing the same thing – a feeling of calm on cold, moonlit evenings, and on brisk, crisply sunny mornings. Enjoying the quiet as I wait for the bus in the early morning light, watching my breath form puffy clouds in front of me. It’s a nice counterpoint to the chaotic joy of the holidays.

As you may recall, another reason I can get behind winter is warm cocktails. Over the years I’ve posted a number of my favorite recipes here, like this Burnt Sugar Hot Buttered Rum and this Nutella Melt. Last year I did a little round-up of all my favorite winter cocktails… which it seems I might have to update soon. My first contribution to that list for this season is this Mulled Spiked Cider with Port and Cranberries, which also has a little red wine, apples, and clementines. Like many of my favorite drinks, it’s inspired by Maria and Tara‘s genius book Winter Cocktails, which pretty much becomes a fixture in my kitchen at this time of year. This warm, sweet, boozy drink was the perfect thing to warm us up over the lazy long weekend… and the leftovers are just the thing to look forward to coming home to after a stressful weekday.

Mulled Spiked Cider with Port and Cranberries

Inspired by Winter Cocktails. Serves 4-6.

• 2 whole cinnamon stick
• 2 whole star anise
• 10 whole cloves
• 3 c. apple cider
• 2 clementines, scrubbed and cut into thin slices
• 1/2 c. fresh cranberries
• 1 apple, cored, peeled and cut into 1/4 inch cubes
• 1/4 c. white sugar
• 2 c. red wine
• 3/4 c. tawny port
• brandy or Bourbon to taste, optional

1. Add the cinnamon, star anise, and cloves to a large saucepan or dutch oven and toast over medium heat until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the apple cider, clementines, cranberries, apple, and sugar and gently simmer until fruit is soft, about 10 minutes. Add the red wine and port and continue heating just until the drink begins to steam, then remove from the heat and cover to keep warm. Ladle into mugs to serve, removing any cloves that you see as you do so. Adding a splash of brandy or Bourbon to each if you like your drinks a little stronger!

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I’ve said it before: the best part of cold weather is warm drinks when you finally get inside. With or without booze (although personally I tend to choose with), they are comforting and festive and a great excuse for sitting around the fire with friends and family. Over the past two years I’ve built up a small repertoire of festive winter cocktails, many inspired by this lovely book, so as we gear up for the holidays and you all are looking for creative drinks to welcome your guests with, I’ve rounded my favorites up in one place. Cheers!

Hot and Mulled

Burnt Sugar Hot Buttered Rum

Hot buttered rum is an old-fashioned drink, but it’s just as delicious today as it was 200 years ago. This version uses a dark caramel as the base for the drink, giving it a deep, caramely sweetness.

Meyer Lemon and Sage Hot Toddy

A mixture of honey, lemon, and rum or whiskey, hot toddies are great when you’re feeling under the weather – the honey and lemon soothes a sore throat while the warm alcohol helps put you to sleep (although if you’re actually sick and not just feeling low, I’d skip the booze and just stick with the honey and lemon). This version uses a sage-infused honey syrup and bright meyer lemons for a twist on the classic.

Sbiten

Sbiten is a Russian mulled cocktail that’s based on a mixture of jam, honey, and winter spices. Although I never actually had one of these while I was in Russia, the thick and sweet drink is just as appropriate during cold New England weather.

Mulled Pear Sangria

Sangria doesn’t have to be saved for spring evenings and summer BBQs – if you serve it warm, it’s equally appropriate in winter. With a pear and cinnamon syrup and a hit of maple liqueur, this drink is full of fall flavors and a great use for white wine on days when a chilled glass of Chardonnay doesn’t sound that appealing.

Ecuadorian Canelazo

Canelazo is a traditional Ecuadorian drink made from naranjilla, a sweet-sour fruit similar to citrus, aguardiente, a sugar-cane based liquor, and cinnamon syrup. It was one of my favorite culinary discoveries in Ecuador, so I came up with this version to have at home.

Warm and Creamy

Nutella Melt

It’s hard to go wrong with nutella, and this nutella-laden and frangelico-spiked version of hot chocolate is no exception. Serve it without the frangelico for an equally appealing kids’ drink.

Chocolate Orange Tom & Jerry

Another old-timey drink, a Tom & Jerry is similar to eggnog in that it’s made from whole eggs and cream, but it’s served warm. In the US it’s most popular in Wisconsin and Minnesota, but I promise this chocolate and orange version will go down well in the rest of the country (and world!), too.

1,001 Kentucky Nights

This drink is decidedly not a classic. Combining coconut milk, dates, cinnamon, bourbon, and rum, it’s a drink with its roots in the Middle East but a profoundly American accent. Sweet and rich but with smoky, woodsy flavors from the bourbon, it’s a great study in contrast.

Salted Caramel Chai Latte

This chai latte sweetened with salted caramel wasn’t designed as a cocktail, but turning it into an Irish coffee with a shot of Bailey’s or whiskey sounds like a pretty good idea to me.

Cold and Bubbly

Cranberry-Ginger Sparkling Rum Cider

Cranberry-ginger syrup, sparkling cider, and dark rum make a pretty addition to any holiday table. As a side note, this drink and the accompanying sweet potato souffle recipe won Captain Morgan’s Thanksgiving challenge last year – it was judged by Hugh Acheson, so you have someone’s word other than mine to go by when I say these are delicious.

Pomegranate Mimosas

These pomegranate mimosas are a standard part of my family’s Christmas brunch, which is slowly replacing opening presents as my favorite part of Christmas. Just looking at them reminds me of bright Christmas mornings spent eating cranberry and vanilla coffee cake and gruyere-baked eggs.

Raspberry Sherbet Champagne Floats

Although these floats could arguably be served at any time of year, I think they’re just right for New Year’s Eve. Festive and pink, they’re a fun way to celebrate a special evening.

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Here in Boston, we’ve reached that point in the year where the warm, crisp fall days have given way to truly frosty, windy mornings when even the brightest sun can’t entice you to stay outside. I’m sure we still have a few nice days left, but we’ve already had snow flurries twice, the winter coats are out on our coat rack, and I’m guessing that this is the last week for those leaves still clinging to the trees. I’m not exactly thrilled at the prospect of hunkering down for the next four months, but one thing I do love about cold weather is the chance to invent and enjoy warm cocktails. On a cold day, there’s little that I find more enticing than the thought of a steaming mug of sweet, boozy cider or a honey-sweetened hot toddy.

I think my love for warm drinks (at least for the alcoholic sort) must have been born during the four months I lived in Prague – I have a very vivid memory of sipping from a glass of piping hot mead at the top of a snow-covered mountain, the steam from the hot drinks and food condensing on the windows of the small wooden cabin. It was a completely blissful experience, at least in my memory. Since then, I’ve been collecting drink recipes from all the cold countries I’ve been to, and I’ve been waiting to share a new one with you since our trip to Ecuador in March. I was first served canelazo, a mixture of cinnamon, naranjilla juice, and aguardiente, when we arrived at our hacienda near Cotopaxi. The altitude in Cotopaxi means that it’s appropriate to serve hot drinks at pretty much any time of day/year. I loved the sweet-and-sour mixture (and perhaps the quick effect it had at altitude), and finished not only my own glass but the extra one on the tray. When I returned to Quito later in the year for work, a co-worker took us up to El Panecillo, a hilltop with a giant statue of a winged angel and a beautiful view of the city. At several of the stands near the statue, they were selling cups of canelazo, and at a price of $0.50, I couldn’t resist ordering one before dinner.

The ingredients for canelazo are a bit tricky to find in New England. Naranjilla, which I mistakenly described as a clementine in my first mention of it, and as a sour orange in my second mention of it, is actually a herbaceous nightshade shrub – not a citrus at all. It does have a sweet-sour citrusy flavor and a bright orange exterior, hence the name “little orange.” Although I read that you can find its pulp in the frozen section of many Latin groceries, and I’m sure I could scrounge some up somewhere in Somerville, I wasn’t in the mood for a grocery store scavenger hunt today, so I used a mix of freshly squeezed orange, tangerine, and lime juice instead. I know that using those fruits may not make for a very authentic representation of the drink, and I’ve also used a much higher ratio of juice to cinnamon water than seems to be typical, but it’s still a bright, warming combination that’s worth giving a try. I did find the traditional aguardiente, a spirit distilled from sugar-cane and sometimes flavored with anise. If you can’t find it near you, either rum or cachaça would be a fine substitute. Now that I have the ingredients, plus a healthy supply of cinnamon sticks, I’m all set to make these babies throughout the winter.

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Ecuadorian Canelazo

Adapted from Laylita and Food.com. Serves 4.

• 3 c. water
• 3/4 c. brown sugar
• 5 cinnamon sticks
• 2 c. freshly squeezed orange juice, divided
• 1 c. freshly squeezed tangerine juice
• 2 limes
• 4 to 8 oz. aguardiente or white rum
• tangerine slices for garnish

1. Place the water, brown sugar, cinnamon sticks, and 1 cup of the orange juice in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium heat, then lower the heat slightly and simmer the syrup for 30 minutes. The syrup should be heavily perfumed with cinnamon and a dark brown color. Add the remaining orange and tangerine juice to the pot and heat just until steaming, then remove from heat. Ladle the cinnamon-orange mixture into four heat-proof glasses. Pour 1 or 2 oz. of aguardiente into each glass depending on taste. Squeeze juice from half a lime into each glass, then briefly stir. Garnish with tangerine slices if desired, and serve immediately.

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• 2 ripe pears, plus extra slices for serving
• 1/3 c. sugar
• 1 c. water
• 1 whole cinnamon stick
• 5 whole cloves
• 4 oz. maple liqueur
• 1 bottle white wine

1. Peel and core the pears and roughly chop into cubes. Place the pear cubes, sugar, water, cinnamon stick, and cloves in a medium saucepan and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Simmer until the pears are soft, about 8-10 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to remove the cinnamon stick and cloves and discard. Puree the pear and syrup mixture until smooth, in a regular blender or using a hand blender.
2. Put the pear syrup back in a saucepan. Add the liqueur and wine and heat over low heat until just steaming. Remove from the heat and ladle into pre-warmed glasses (to prevent cracking. Garnish each glass with a few slices of pear, then serve.

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