Hot Cider, Fortified with Spiced Butter and Rum

When the sun bears down on Southern California, hot buttered drinks are alien, repulsive things. San Diegans in particular subsist on the simple pleasures of good beer and strong margaritas. Let the fog roll in or a chill come on, though, and our booze equilibrium shifts. We may not get snowdrifts or nor’easters here, but on windswept nights when fat drops of rain spank the windows and tree tips slap wetly against the house, hot rum is a certain prophylactic against the cold.

Good size pats for hot rum

Some folks make a simple, almost Puritanical, hot buttered rum: a tot of rum, topped with hot water, and garnished with a little pat of butter. I suppose that does keep the cold at bay, but its comfort is brutal and perfunctory. I like something more luxe, something actually pleasant to drink, something that makes me look at the bottom of an emptied mug and think 'Maybe one more...' Adding a stick of cinnamon helps, but it still wants a bit more character. Nothing fancy, just…a bit more. For that something extra, I swap out water with spiced cider and flavor the butter with that old British baking standby, mixed spice.

Mixed spice is similar to American pumpkin pie spice, but with coriander, mace, and cloves. We know all these notes; they're just arranged here differently. Mash a bit of it into unsalted butter with brown sugar and there's a spiced butter that is a nice touch on pancakes, waffles, English muffins — even bread and butter pudding. But let's not forget why we're here. We're doctoring rum with it. So let's get on with it.

Mixed Spice

1 tablespoon each — allspice, cinnamon, and nutmeg (all ground)
2 teaspoons — mace (ground)
1 teaspoon each — cloves, coriander, and ginger (all ground)

Blend together and store in an airtight container. 

This will make more than you need for the butter. Tuck it into the cabinet and break it out for apple pies, puddings, gingerbread, braised pork, pumpkin stews, etc.

Ready to roll

For the spiced butter, it's almost ridiculous to think of what I do as a recipe. It's more of a guideline; weigh some quantity of butter, add half as much brown sugar, and mash in enough mixed spice with a fork or the back of a spoon to give it the intensity of flavor I like. For those who insist on proportions, try this:

Mixed Spice Butter 

100 g unsalted butter
50g soft brown sugar
1 tsp mixed spice (above) 

Mash into a paste either by hand or in a mixer. Roll into a 5" log on parchment paper. Twist the ends in opposite directions, and store in the refrigerator. 

]Now, then. The drink.

Hot Cider with Rum and Spiced Butter

1 quart unfiltered apple cider (non-alcoholic, but hey, use the hard stuff if you prefer, drunkie)
3 allspice berries, cracked (or a half-ounce of allspice dram)
2 4" cinnamon sticks
2 star anise
2 cloves
3-4 1" wide swathes of orange peel
2 oz rum (Appleton 12 year, Barbancourt 8 year, or Rhum JM are nice)
1 pencil-thick disc of mixed spice butter (above)

Heat the apple cider, spices, and orange peel in a 2-quart pan and simmer gently15 minutes or so. Meanwhile, pour the rum into heat-proof glasses or ceramic mugs. Top off with hot spiced cider and slip a disc of mixed spice butter into each mug.

Repeat until the cider is gone. Then go get more cider.

Goes well with:

• Know what else is good in cold weather? A big ol' mug of masala chai or hot chocolate spiked with Chartreuse. Still don't want butter in your hot booze drinks? May I suggest a negus?
• Half-slab pumpkin, an on-the-fly roast of pumpkin slices, seasoned with a mix I usually use on pork ribs.  Serve it — or not — with a side of homemade German noodles. 
• The mixed spice, tossed with sugar, would make a good dusting for pumpkin and ginger doughnuts. 
• "We’ve known each other nearly twenty years; I know what the boy likes to put in his mouth. The look of surprise that leapt to his face at the first sip was pretty much what I expected." Someone tries the champurrado for the first time.  
• Halloween is coming. Why not try a Skellington Bowl with brandy, rum, and boiled cider?
• Erick Castro's Cinnamon Wind tiki cocktail with Appleton rum and Becherovka. 

Cider Week 2012

I don't go for bullshit holidays. Nobody in my house has time for No Socks Day, National High Five Day, or Absinthe Drip Day. That's not to say I always wear socks or would snub anyone who was kind enough to offer me an absinthe drip. It's just that devoting a whole day for made-up, marketing-driven advertising and awareness campaigns is, well, bullshit.

A whole week for cider, though? That's a different story.

Next month's Cider Week gets a preview at New York's Astor Center with Cider Salon tomorrow evening, September 18. The event — with over a dozen producers offering their hard ciders — is a benefit for Glynwood’s Apple Project and Cider Week NY. Details for the salon are here, but if one day is too short a notice, check out the rest of the schedule for October 12-21, 2012.

Goes well with:

• Where one finds hard cider, apple spirits can't be far away. America's current apple spirits scene is a lot more lively than applejack. From absinthe to cider royal, check out what today's distillers are doing with apples.
• It's not fermented, but boiled cider is a great old-fashioned syrup to have around. The recipe is: apple cider. Oh, and cooking. Here's how. 
• Once you've made a batch of boiled cider, slip it some rum and brandy for a tiki Halloween punch.

Happy Halloween!

I'm not what you'd call a tiki carver by any stretch of the imagination. But with Halloween here and a load of pumpkins begging for the knife, I couldn't resist bringing a little South Seas fantasy to the traditional Jack-O-Lanterns.


Happy Halloween, ya'll.

With a tip of the hat to Trader Vic's Scorpion Bowl, here's a punch for just such a carving.

Skellington Bowl

6 oz fresh orange juice
5 ounces lemon juice
2 oz boiled cider
1 oz orgeat
.5 oz cinnamon syrup
6 ounces of light rum
1 oz brandy

Blend with two cups of crushed ice. Pour into the hollowed out pumpkin. Add ice cubes to fill, and insert 2 or 3 straws.

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Boiled Cider, an Old New England Syrup

There is nothing especially technical about serving cider
if you bought it at the right place
and kept it cold long enough
for it to harden a little.

~ Louise Andrews Kent
Mrs. Appleyard’s Kitchen (1942)

Once the temperature dips, my thoughts turn to hearty meals. For the last fifteen years or so, that also means cider: sweet, hard, mulled, or boiled. If it's apple squeezin’s, I'm in. I’m not talking about distilling hard cider (though that has its own appeal and I particularly like Mrs. Appleyard’s commonsense approach to such things), but simply pouring fresh apple cider in a broad pot, turning on the heat, and letting it boil down until it becomes a sweet syrup.

There. That’s more or less the recipe.

Although lately I’ve been livening up cocktails with the stuff, it’s versatile syrup that’s put to good use in both sweet and savory dishes such as pies, baked beans, fools, wild rice pilafs, and pork roasts—even gingerbread. Bacon, oranges, and mustard are especially nice complements (see below for a boiled cider pie recipe).

For cocktails, I find that boiled cider goes particularly well with applejack, Calvados, brandy, and rum. I’m not in any particular rush to try it with gin, but let me know what you think if you give it a shot.

In more detail, here’s how to do it. Make it enough times and you’ll get to understand when to take it off the fire just by its smell, dark color, and thick consistency. Until then, cheat: Once the cider is in the pot, but before it comes to a boil, insert a cake tester, wooden BBQ skewer, or wooden chopstick straight down into it. This is your dipstick.

Mark the depth of the cider on the wood. Then mark half of that. Then mark half again. Then mark half of the last mark—this should be 1/8th the original height. Cook until the level is almost down to the last mark. You’re looking for about a 7:1 reduction. A little more or a little less isn’t going to hurt.

Boiled Cider

1 gallon/4 liters of fresh sweet cider

Pour the cider into a broad and deep heavy-bottomed pan (I use a large enameled Le Creuset Dutch oven). Turn heat to high.

Boil the cider, uncovered, until volume is reduced to just under 400ml (about half a whiskey bottle’s worth).

Let cool and bottle. I tend neither to filter or to refrigerate the syrup, but do as you please. In any event, keep it in a cool, dark place.

Right. That pie I mentioned.

Richard Sax’s Classic Home Desserts is my go-to dessert book. If I could only keep one dessert book out the whole library, this would be it. This, in fact, was the book that introduced me to boiled cider. Here’s an adaptation of his recipe. If you don’t have his book but enjoy cooking desserts, go get a copy.

New England Boiled Cider Pie
Adapted from Richard Sax (1994) Classic Home Desserts

1 unbaked pie crust
2/3 cup boiled cider
2 Tbl sugar, or to taste
2 Tbl plus 1 tsp unsalted butter, melted
2 Tbl fresh lemon juice
Pinch of salt
2 large eggs, well beaten
2 tart apples, such as Granny Smith, peeled, cored and coarsely grated
3 tablespoons packed brown sugar
1/8 tsp fresh-grated nutmeg
Vanilla ice cream or whipped cream for serving

Roll out pie dough on a lightly floured surface to about 1/8” thick and place into a buttered pie pan. Trim all but ¾” around pie, then turn edge under and make a fluted border, then chill in the fridge.

Preheat oven to 375°F/190°C.

In a bowl, whisk together the boiled cider, sugar, melted butter, lemon juice, salt and eggs. Add the grated apples and stir to blend well. Pour the filling into the prepared pie crust, sprinkle with brown sugar and nutmeg and bake until the center is just set, about 50 minutes.

Cool on a wire rack and serve warm with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

Goes well with:

Willis and Tina Wood’s family has been making their boiled cider since 1882. If you don’t feel like making your own, give them a jingle.

Wood’s Cider Mill
1482 Weathersfield Center Road
Springfield, VT 05156
P: 802.263.5547
Fax: 802.263.9674

email: orders@woodscidermill.com

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