I’ve had hot spiced cider since then that was prepared the right way and have rather enjoyed it, but I kept hearing about buttered cider.  Quite honestly, putting a bunch of butter in apple cider sounded disgusting to me and I avoided trying it.  Of course, I made myself suck it up and try a recipe that has been catching my eye in my favorite holiday cookbook.  People.  PEOPLE.  LISTEN TO ME.  I’m glad I tried it.

Hot Buttered Cider

Favorite Brand Name Old Fashioned Holiday Recipes Cookbook 2004

1/3 cup packed brown sugar

1/4 cup butter or margarine, softened

1/4 cup honey

1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Apple cider or juice

Basically what you’re going to do is whip the butter up with all the rest of the ingredients minus the apple cider and make a sweet butter out of it.  Put it in an airtight container and refrigerate.  When you’re ready to use it, let it come to room temperature.  Heat up some apple cider and put it in your drinking mugs.  Put a plop of the butter in the hot cider and stir.  You want to add 1 Tablespoon of the butter for every cup of cider.

I had a “DAYUM! THAT’S GOOD!” moment when I first tasted this.  You know how spiced cider can sometimes have a little bit of a bite to it?  Well the butter smooths that bite out.  This drink slips right down.  It’s spiced, sweet, and delicious.  To be honest, you can’t taste the butter.  It’s just a smooth and yummy sweet spiced cider.  Luckily this recipe makes 12 servings so I still have a few mugs of this wonderful libation from the batch that I made.

Please try it and really, you should buy that cookbook I keep linking to.  Every holiday season I link to it because I love it so much.  Give it a whirl!  It’s not the current hot cookbook and it wasn’t written by a celerity chef.  It’s a hokey cookbook put out by Nestle, I believe, but the recipes inside are so damned good.  (No, I’m not being paid or compensated in any way to push this cookbook off on you.  I’m doing it for the sheer joy of annoying you!)

Enjoy!

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You want 10 tea bags for this recipe.  If you choose to add a flavored tea, it’s 9 regular tea bags and 1 flavored tea bag.  The flavoring will be really light and sweet and people will sit and sip the tea asking what that flavor is.

Take the tea bags out of their outer wrappers and throw the bags into a large bowl.  Pour 8 cups of boiling water over the tea bags and make sure all of them are steeping.  Let the tea steep for 10 minutes.

The liquid will be very dark and will have a pleasant aroma.  Remove the tea bags with a spoon, making sure to squeeze any liquid out of them.

Now for this to be Iced Tea, it has to be served cold.  You can certainly just pour this into your pitcher now and dillute it with cold water and have cold iced tea in 2 hours OR you can fill your 1 gallon pitcher 3/4 of the way full with ice and then add the undilluted liquid, melting the ice and cooling the liquid.  Stir to melt the ice thoroughly and then add enough water to reach the 1 gallon mark on your pitcher.

You’ll notice at this point that I have not mentioned any sort of sweeteners.  I know you can add like a bajillion cups of sugar and then you’ll have Southern Sweet Tea (and no teeth) or you can leave the liquid in the pitcher unsweetened.  I buy those little yellow packets of artificial sweetener and add 1 packet to my glass and it sweetens the tea just enough without making the brew taste like syrup.  If you like Southern Sweet Tea, then by all means add a bajillion cups of sugar.  Me?  I’ll stick with the one packet.

The end product is a truly refreshing drink that my husband and I both love to drink in the warmer months.  It’s real Iced Tea and it’s cheaper and better than that other stuff.  Give it a try, thank me later.

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