Baked Apple Pie Toddy

Eric and I just made this up today, after fiddling with the Hot Toddy recipe that's in the Dec-Jan 2011 Mary Jane's Farm magazine.

- 1 baked apple (peeled & cored, filled with 1 pat of butter and some cinnamon, then baked at 400F for 1hr - we made 4 at once, baking them in pyrex)
- black tea (we used Tulsi tea b/c we had it and it was caffeine free)
- 1 T brown sugar
- 1 pat of butter
- shake of sea salt
- small splash of vanilla extract
- nutmeg
- 1 oz of bourbon (or however much)

We whirred everything up with a hand blender, adding the butter after first blending everything else a little.
It was so delicious - like a hot apple pie drink. There's a Szarlotka in Poland (apple juice and Zubrowka) that taste like a cold apple pie, but this is amazing for cold nights by the fire!

I think next time we'll use mead instead of the bourbon. On our honeymoon last month, Eric and I stopped at the Shady Grove Meadery in Tennessee. How could we not stop at a place called Shady Grove that made mead?? Their mead is so delicious - I generally prefer dry wines/meads/ciders/etc but their sparkling apricot mead blew me away. We also got some amazing honey and honey-rosemary jam. Later we were kicking ourselves for not buying a whole case of the sparkling mead. I made really simple but delicious drink when we got back to Indiana with their non-sparkling dry mead: mead with San Pellegrino Limonata soda (my absolute favorite soda - along with the aranciata).