There's a very specific kind of cold that only happens on the 5th of November — standing in a field, or a garden, or a car park that's been repurposed for the evening, watching fireworks with your hands wrapped round a cup for warmth as much as anything else. What's in the cup matters more on Bonfire Night than almost any other night of the year.
Here are two ways to do it properly.
Mulled Cider, Simplified
Mulled wine gets all the attention, but cider is the better base for a big-batch, stand-in-the-garden drink — it's more forgiving, cheaper to make in volume, and doesn't need eight different spices you'll only use once a year.
For a 2-litre batch:
- 2 litres of cloudy cider (not too sweet)
- 1 orange, sliced
- 2 cinnamon sticks
- A few cloves, whole
- 2 heaped tablespoons of Dirty Vanilla
Warm everything together on a low heat — never let it boil, or you'll cook off the alcohol and half the flavour with it. Fifteen to twenty minutes is enough for the spices to do their work. The Dirty Vanilla sugar does two jobs here: it sweetens the cider properly (cloudy cider on its own can taste thin once it's warm and the carbonation's gone), and the bourbon vanilla note rounds off the spice mix so it tastes finished rather than just spiced. Ladle into mugs everyone's happy to never see again.
Hot Chocolate That Earns Its Marshmallows
Bonfire Night hot chocolate has a habit of being an afterthought — a sachet, some hot milk, done. It deserves better than that, mostly because it's usually the thing that gets people back indoors happy rather than just cold and slightly damp.
Per mug:
- 200ml whole milk, warmed gently (don't boil)
- A heaped teaspoon of Midnight Mocha
- 30g dark chocolate, chopped, stirred in until melted
- Whisk until it's got a bit of froth on top
Midnight Mocha is dark cocoa and coffee notes on a light muscovado base, which means it's already doing half the work a hot chocolate recipe normally asks a mug of cocoa powder to do — it deepens the chocolate rather than just sweetening it. If you're making this for a crowd, do the milk in a big pan, stir the Midnight Mocha through before it goes anywhere near the chocolate, and ladle it out the same way as the cider.
The practical bit
If you're hosting — even informally, even if "hosting" means "some people are coming round before we all go and stand in a field" — both of these travel well in a flask. Make them slightly stronger than you'd want to drink them immediately, since a flask mutes flavour a little over an hour or two outside.
And if you're doing both drinks for a mixed crowd of adults and kids, the hot chocolate obviously does double duty without the cider. Nobody will notice it's doing double duty. That's the point.
Try it with: Midnight Mocha · Dirty Vanilla — or grab the sampler set if you're not sure which way the night's going.
