Give Your Hot Toddy A Spicy Twist With This Ingredient

When the cold winds of winter creep through your layers and a deep chill takes hold in your very core, few things banish it faster than a hot toddy. The coziest of cocktails, a traditional hot toddy recipe relies on the simple combination of whiskey, hot water, lemon, and honey. It is a drink that warms you inside and out, and the addition of a touch of citrus not only balances the sweetness but also lends it some cold-fighting vitamin C. But there's one simple ingredient swap that can lend this classic cocktail yet another warming layer: hot honey.

Hot toddies are just one among the list of drinks made better by hot honey, but in this case, that little dash of capsaicin really does wonders. Suddenly, it is not just the warmth of the drink and the belly-warming power of the booze, but also a touch of heat on the tongue that helps this beverage hold winter at bay. Because it is such a simple swap, you won't notice much difference from your favorite hot toddy recipe except the extra tingle that a little bit of spice lends. That said, it can also be an avenue to introduce a lot of other interesting notes to the drink.

While you can use a store-bought hot honey brand, it is actually quite an easy ingredient to make at home — and homemade honey lets you control the amount of heat in the mix. You can make it with all kinds of different spicy ingredients, but the fastest and easiest homemade hot honey requires no more than honey and crushed red pepper or ground cayenne. You may need to experiment to find your perfect spice level, but whipping up a batch is nearly effortless.

If you do choose to make your own hot honey, there's also no reason that you need to stick with the simplest recipe out there. You can easily infuse honey with lots of flavorful ingredients, many of which add an intriguing new angle to the classic cocktail. Black pepper, for example, lends a different sort of heat to the drink, whereas thyme or lavender provides an interesting aromatic quality — and you can't go wrong with warm spices like cinnamon or cloves.

Aside from tinkering with the sweetener, you can also consider changing other ingredients — like the spirit, for example. Whiskey is typical in the drink, but the disputed history of the hot toddy means that there's no right liquor choice. Recipes abound using Scotch, bourbon, Irish whiskey, whatever the maker prefers, and some even think that the sweeter dark rum is the ideal liquor for a hot toddy. In fact, there are even recipes that stray away from dark liquor entirely, like this interesting gin hot toddy recipe with campari and blood orange. It's your winter warmer, spike it as you please.

You can also feel free in your culinary crafting to play with the nonalcoholic liquids in the glass. An apple cider hot toddy is a wonderful seasonal beverage, or you can replace the hot water with chai tea to bring some caffeine and spice to the table. Hot honey is a great first addition, but once you see how delicious that is, you might find yourself excited to toy with something new in the next round.