Hot Buttered Rum is a festive cocktail flavored with butter, brown sugar, spices, and vanilla. Serve this warm and cozy drink all winter long.
It’s not the holiday season until we put butter in a cocktail. Yep, you read that right: BUTTER IN A COCKTAIL! Hot Buttered Rum is a warm, cozy cocktail that is flavored with butter, brown sugar, spices, vanilla, and rum. This festive cocktail is guaranteed to be a crowd-pleaser.
More cocktails: White Russian – Grasshopper – Aperol Spritz – Champagne Cocktail – Cherry Sangria – French 75
How to Make Hot Buttered Rum:
This is a sweet, buttery, spiced rum cocktail that is served warm. This recipe makes a pitcher of cocktails (about 4-5); you can easily halve or double the recipe as necessary.
- Combine softened butter with brown sugar, maple syrup, vanilla, and spices.
- Add spiced rum and hot water to the butter mixture, whisking until smooth and combined.
- Pour into glasses and serve immediately. Garnish with whipped cream and a cinnamon stick, if desired.
Flavor Variations for Hot Buttered Rum:
Use my recipe as a guide, adapting it to suit your taste. Feel free to play around with the portions of water and rum to make it stronger. You can also tweak the flavorings by doing any of the following:
- Spices: This recipe uses cinnamon (primarily), along with a bit of nutmeg and cloves. You can also use ginger, allspice, or apple/pumpkin pie spice (which is a blend of spices). Increase or decrease the different spices to get your perfect blend.
- Orange: Add some finely grated orange zest into the butter mixture for an underlying citrus flavor. You can also garnish each drink with a piece of thinly sliced orange.
- Apple cider: Swap some of the hot water for hot apple cider. This will make a sweeter apple-flavored cocktail. You can also garnish each drink with a thinly sliced apple.
- Honey: In addition to sweetening this drink with brown sugar, I also add maple syrup. Feel free to swap the syrup for honey if that is a flavor you’d prefer.
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Recipe
Hot Buttered Rum
Ingredients
- 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
- ⅓ cup brown sugar, packed
- 3 tablespoons maple syrup
- ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ⅛ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 2 pinches ground cloves or anise
- ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
- pinch salt
- ¾ cup spiced rum, more or less, to taste*
- 3 cups boiling water (approximately), more or less, to taste*
Instructions
- Using an electric mixer, beat butter, brown sugar, syrup, spices, vanilla, and salt until combined.
- Place the butter in the bottom of a pitcher or large glass measuring cup. Add the rum, followed by the boiling water (start with 2 cups of water, taste, and add more until you get it right where you want it. I used right around 3 cups total) . Whisk until combined. Serve immediately. Garnish with whipped cream, if desired.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutritional Information is an estimate based on third-party calculations and may vary based on products used and serving sizes.
Tried this recipe?Leave a comment and rating below!
Claudia Lamascolo
I am so glad I have spiced rum in the house this is just what I need to try with it thanks!
Christa
This is one of my favorite winter drinks. I just had one at a bar that used egg nog and black tea- it was delicious but not traditional enough for me. I like the use of brown sugar here! Thanks for posting!
Celebrating Sweets
You’re welcome. Enjoy!
Alicia Yoder
Has anybody made this recipe, doubled, to put the butter mixture in the fridge for use later? How much mixture, rum and water would you use for a coffee mug?
MrsHuf
If you wanted approximately 8 servings of the spiced butter mix try doubling the first 8 ingredients (hard to do precisely since the amounts aren’t listed in grams and “pinches” tend to be subjective). You would then mix approximately 3 T of the butter mix, 3 T of Spiced Rum and 3/4c of boiling water to make one serving. It seems like the butter/spice part doubled makes around 25.3 tablespoons of mix so, if you have a kitchen scale, you could weigh it and then divide by 8 to see the actual weight of the butter mix per serving.
As the blog says – a lot of it will be to taste. I just had my first ever (from two different places) hot buttered rums over the past two weeks. They are lovely and I’m going to try making them at home now for the holidays.
Katie
Delicious! My family loves it!
Theresa
A hit at our home!
Allison
I’m glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment. 🙂
Morty
This recipe turned out great! It was a hit at our Thanksgiving gathering. We’ll be making many more batches next week for Christmas.
Michelle Cottrell
Can you do this in a crock pot??
Allison
I haven’t tried it. I would guess that you could, you’ll just want to stir it frequently to keep it from separating.
Sarah Sullivan
This was delicious! I would double the recipe if you plan to use coffee mugs like I did as it was 4 very small servings. Also I used Kerrygold butter for extra richness. This is going to be a new tradition. Highly reccomen
Allison
Great idea to use Kerrygold! I’m glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for taking the time to comment. 🙂
Kaylyn E
This is my go-to hot buttered rum recipe! Crowd favorite 🙂
Allison
I’m glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for stopping by. 🙂
Jennifer
I had a bunch of spiced rum left over from making eggnog for Christmas and I was looking for ideas to use it with. I was convinced that I should like hot buttered rum because I like all the ingredients, but I tried several recipes before I got to this one that I found barely drinkable. I’m glad I kept trying, because this one is amazing. I’ve definitely saved it to use as my go-to next winter.
Allison
I’m so glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for stopping by. 🙂
Stephanie Brassil
Excellent combination of ingredients. I skipped the Maple syrup and honey and added some heavy cream and pumpkin pie spice. The main ingredients are the basis of a delightful winter cocktail. Ummmmm-ummmmm !❄🧣🌨
Allison
Yum! I’m glad you enjoyed it!
Wendy
Used apple cider instead of water & it was amazing!! Got asked for the recipe 🍻
Allison
Great idea! That sounds delicious!