Cockle-warming hot toddies to sip this festive season.

If there is one mixological tip that I find myself impressing again and again, it is that cocktails must be as cold as a narwhal’s tusk. However, there are times when it makes sense to take things in the opposite direction. In the days before refrigeration, hard liquor was consumed hot more often than it was consumed cold. And when you return home from a hard day trapping seals or felling pines (or simply negotiating the festive crowds), there is nothing so revitalising as sniffing the heady gin fumes while curling around the hearth. Here are three cocktails – punches, really – that are at their best piping hot and all much more sophisticated (and fun) than an extra layer.

Punch should always be a delicate dance of sweetness, sourness, spice, strength (here provided by gin) and dilution (here provided by Indian-style spiced black tea). That’s the general principle, but there are two hacks that have improved my own punches no end. The first (as laboriously expounded by 19th-century punch masters such as Mr Jerry Thomas and Mr Charles Dickens) is to extract as much zesty goodness from your lemon peels as possible, by rubbing them with sugar to draw out the sherbet. Sicilian lemons – which are used to make limoncello – have the most fragrant peels, and it really does make the difference. The second is not to use too much lemon juice, which was expensive and hard to source in the golden ages of punch. Your mixture should be more sweet than acid, with the flavour coming principally from spice and booze. The below quantities are for one, but punch should really be enjoyed communally so do multiply for a large party.

Ingredients:

One lemon 15g brown sugar 100ml hot chai 50ml gin Angostura bitters

To garnish: cinnamon sticks

Method:

Peel the lemon, taking care to avoid the bitter white pith. Pound the sugar into the peel in the bottom of a mug so that it absorbs the oil – this is your oleo-saccharum, the key to deliciousness. Add the chai (use a good loose-leaf blend, or a tea bag if you must) to dissolve the sugar and then strain into a fresh mug so as to remove the zest (or just fish it out). Then introduce your gin and Angostura bitters and squeeze in just a little lemon juice to taste. Garnish with a cinnamon stick and a lemon wedge.

Hot buttered rum is an old-timey winter drink that requires you to melt a pat of butter in a mug of hot sweet rum. Which is all well and good – if you like drinking melted butter. Apply a little science, however, and the drink becomes the delicious treat it always promised to be. If you fat-wash your rum in the butter in advance (see method below), you get all of the flavour of the butter without the oil slick in a mug. Your butter-washed rum will also make a mean old fashioned, with a spoonful of sugar and a dash of Angostura bitters.

Ingredients:

50ml butter-washed rum 100ml hot dry (hard) cider 10ml honey

To garnish: nutmeg

Method:

To make butter-washed rum, simply melt 50g butter and pour into a jar along with 250ml dark rum. Shake well and leave it in the fridge overnight. In the morning, pass the liquid through a coffee filter to collect your buttery rum. (Spread the rummy butter on toast for a superior breakfast.) To make the drink itself, warm the cider in a pan until it’s just about to boil, then combine with a generous double shot of the butter-washed rum and honey to taste. Garnish with grated nutmeg.

Green Chartreuse is a hyper-strong herbal liqueur produced by French Carthusian monks to show God how much they love Him and all that He created. It’s heavenly. And if you have been thawing out in the correct Alpine lodges, you will know that when combined with a chocolat chaud, it sends the après-ski crowd wild. The combination is prescribed on the label, no less – and when made with proper hot chocolate (ie, not made from cocoa powder) it warms cockles and much else. The key here is to use astoundingly good chocolate: Åkesson’s Madagascar 75 per cent Criollo or Marou’s Ben Tre 78 per cent, both available from Cocoa Runners, are matchless. And an extra shot of brandy in anything hot is rarely a bad idea.

Ingredients:

100ml whole milk 50g exceptionally good dark chocolate 25ml brandy 25ml Green Chartreuse Sugar to taste

To garnish: whipped cream, marshmallows

Method:

Place the milk in a pan and bring to the boil on the stove. Once it has started bubbling up, turn off the heat. Meanwhile, grate your chocolate into a mug (or, if you’re making this for multiple people, a punch bowl or jug). Ideally you will use a Microplane grater for this. Pour over the hot milk a little at a time, stirring all the while, so that the chocolate melts evenly. You should end up with a lovely viscose hot chocolate. Now warm the spirits just a little – you can use the milk pan for this – and drop them in. Depending on the sweetness of the chocolate you’ve used, you may like to add a spoonful of sugar to taste. Garnish with whipped cream and/or marshmallows. We won’t tell anyone.