Hot Buttered Rum

It took a snowy day for me to learn how to make a hot buttered rum.  It's really very simple, but requires a little patience, mostly to allow time for the butter to come to room temperature. If you're in a hurry, then I suppose a zap or two in the microwave oven would do the trick.  Make sure you're using a premium dark rum, like Pyrat XO Reserve or Myers's Dark.

Rum is often thought of as having come from the Caribbean, but the true origins of the distilled spirit from sugarcane molasses isn't really known.  A discovered Swedish war ship that sunk in 1628 carried a tin container of rum.  Marco Polo recorded having a rum-like wine made from sugarcane in the 14th century in what is now modern day Iraq, and even a drink produced from fermented sugarcane juice is recorded in ancient Sanskrit texts.

Hot buttered rum originated in the American colonial period but became particularly popular among the snow skiing jet-setters of the 1960s.  Admittedly, there is something about sipping a hot buttered rum near a roaring fireplace with snow on the ground that makes the beverage magical, especially delicious and even medicinal.

Ingredients
1 cup softened unsalted butter (two sticks)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup honey
1 tsp premium vanilla extract
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground allspice

The Recipe
Mix the butter, vanilla extract and the honey together until well blended. This will loosen the butter and make it easier to incorporate the remaining dry ingredients. Mix well until you have a homogeneous blend without any variations in color. You can then place this in a container with a tight fitting lid, and it will keep refrigerated for months.

To make a hot buttered rum, put two heaping tablespoons of the butter mixture in a coffee mug.  Add two ounces of premium dark rum.  Bring water to a boil in a kettle or sauce pan, and add six ounces of hot water to the mug.  Stir to blend and garnish with a cinnamon stick.