A barrage of Christmas recipes to come, starting with Hot Spiked Apple Cider

Over the next week, I plan on posting as many holiday-themed recipes as I can. I had an email request for appetizers (my favorite "food genre") so I'll be posting those as well. And a reminder that you can always peruse the categories to the right of this post for appetizer (or any other) ideas. I know there are a lot of categories, I'm trying to pare them down...

In other exciting news, the lovely Event Bliss folks who designed my blog added a print function so that you can print recipes without printing everything else on the page. I care about your printer ink.

First things first. The drunken apple cider. My pal Suzanne made this last year at her ladies-only holiday gathering and I almost drank the whole batch. It's a delicious holiday cocktail. I'd much prefer sippling this instead of nasty, boozy egg nog. I'm serving this more than once over the holidays.

HOT SPIKED APPLE CIDER

• 12 cups apple cider
• 1/4 cup orange juice
• 1 orange, peel only cut into strips
• 1 tablespoon (packed) brown sugar
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 2 whole cloves
• 2 whole allspice
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 1 1/2 cups brandy (or have people spike their own drinks)

Mix everything but the brandy in large saucepan. Bring to boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer mixture 30 minutes to blend flavors.  Strain mulled cider into mugs.

Comments

[ms. porter]

I'm not a cider kinda gal but I bet it makes the house smell wonderfully festive (especially for us here in ON Canada with a recent winter snowfall record)....looking forward to your holiday recipes.

[foodiemama]

ahhh..so this is tried and true?i am hosting x-mas brunch for my parents and want to do cider but it'll have to be sans alcohol...or not we'll see, haha!

[Pamela]

I could use a mug of that right now.

[Pamela]

I could use a mug of that right now.

[Nina]

ooh, this sounds delicious. I've been thinking about making cider on Christmas but never thought about a spiked version. Too bad I'm pregnant...maybe I'll follow the suggestion to have them spike their own drinks.

[Mary]

We also do cider but use Spiced Rum to spike ours. We usually just let guest spike their own.
Yummy !!!

[erin]

Yay to your blog designer for making it so you can print just the recipe! Can I make a small, further request? Is there anyway to not print the comments? Your one page recipe turned into two pages with the comments. Thanks for listening!!!

[Cafemommy]

Ahhhh...today is a long day for me and I can't wait to come home and try this...I've asked my hubby to buy the ingredients we don't have! Looking forward to it. Many thanks for sharing!

[pixie sticks]

Is it weird that the only think I can focus on in this picture/recipe is that awesome lemon zest string? Enchanting.

[mama's got moxie]

great!! i've got a few days off so that means i can experiment!! can i just mention here that my husband hates when i experiment because that usually means i've missed some very important instruction in the recipe and now dinner totally sux?