Favorite Fall Hot Drinks: Cozy Up by the Fire and Sip
Favorite fall hot drinks to cozy up around a bonfire or the fireplace.
That distinct chill is in the air, and leaves crackle underfoot.
Come home and relax with a delicious, steamy beverage.
About 3 hours’ drive from us is the Mogollon Rim.
That’s not Mongolian, friends. You say this one “muggy-yawn” and it looks like a one-sided fault line in the center of our state.
It has all the fall colors and with the higher elevation, has the fall feels much sooner than we do here in the desert valley.
So when the calendar edges towards cooler days on the rim, we make a trip up there to stroll the paths under the falling leaves and smell the moisture of the cooling earth under the pines.
Then in the evening when we’re nice and weary and the temps are dipping down,
we pull out a thermos (or drive through Starbucks on the way back home) and cozy up with a hot drink.
These recipes are some of our family favorites.
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Our list of favorite fall hot drinks:
Chocolate Caliente Mexicano
Last winter our local supermarket had a little stand where a lady was handing out tiny cups of hot “Abuelita” chocolate. So good.
Use that for this recipe if you can find it. It has a more authentic Mexico taste and texture than our unsweetened cocoa powder.
In Mexico they froth the chocolate drink with a molinillo, a wooden whisk that looks a little like a honey spiral with a few loose disks on top of the spiral bulb to create more movement. You hold the handle between your palms and roll it back and forth quickly in the cup to froth the liquid.
I don’t have a molinillo, so a wire whisk does the job.
Cinnamon Cafe Mocha
I first made this hot drink with a homemade mix, which includes instant coffee and dry creamer.
Not to be a snob or anything, because that mix travels well and does taste good,
but nothing beats a hot cinnamon cafe mocha like starting out with whole coffee beans.
Try our version.
Crockpot Apple Cider
Every fall, after school starts, the ladies from our church get together the second Tuesday for an all day “volunteer projects” day that we simply call “sewing.”
Mostly we prepare blankets to send to disaster areas, like Hurricane Laura victim who have lost everything.
Another project is baby items wrapped in blankets which we donate to our clinics for mamas who have nothing for their newborn.
For our October, or November, sewing, someone prepares a crockpot of apple cider, and we work happily with the delicious aroma infusing our space.
This is the recipe, with variations, depending which lady makes it.
Cafe Brulot (safe and non-alcoholic)
Our son and his family spent a year in Louisianna, so we went to visit them last Thanksgiving.
We toured New Orleans one day and they introduced us to many of the city’s sights and traditions, like beignets and chicory and street performers.
We did not have Cafe Brulot, neither safe nor un-safe. But that would have been a lovely lagniappe! If we drank alcohol.
The attraction for the hot beverage lies in it’s presentation: flaming brew dipped back and forth to mix, then extinguished with black coffee and ladled into demitasse cups to serve.
So here’s our safe, no-flame and non-alcoholic version.
(It is a taste sensation even without the theatrics.)
London Fog
How do you like your tea?
Preferably in the garden at a tea party?
Yes, me, too.
However, that doesn’t sound like a fall drink to me, so we’ll skip the garden tea party, and have high tea in a non-bone-china mug with frothy milk. Mmmm.
This is London Fog:
Caramel Vanilla Chai Tea Latte
There’s a few in our family who stay away from coffee.
After almost 40 years of marriage, I’m still working on my husband to drink it! He says he’ll stick with hot chocolate, thank you very much.
However, he does like tea once in awhile,
so to make tea into a fall beverage worthy of snuggling between cold hands, here’s our version of Chai Tea Latte.
Writing up all these recipes made me think of a few more,
but this list is a good start, right?
