You know it's almost Christmas when...

It's 12 days til Christmas! Wasn't it just Halloween?

You know it's almost Christmas when I start making Apple Cider. Nothing says tis the season like smelling that wonderful cinnamon-y aroma. Nothing.

I don't actually like to drink the stuff. It's not my favorite hot beverage, but I make it almost every night just so I can smell it. You can rewarm it once or twice and it still tastes good...according to Honey. But you can rewarm it several times and just smell it.

I picked up a coffee urn several years ago at Walmart. The rule at my house is that coffee urns are for apple cider, coffee makers are for coffee, electric tea kettles are for hot chocolate. NEVER put coffee in the coffee urn. Coffee flavored apple cider just ain't right.

So here's what you need to make apple cider the Hairdryer way:

Coffee urn (a large pot warming on the stove works too)

48 oz. Apple cider

16 oz. Cranberry juice

10 oz. Red hots

Put the juice and the cider in the liquid part of the urn. Then pour the red hots into the basket where the coffee usually goes. No filter is needed. Plug the urn in and let the liquid melt the red hots as it percolates through. 64 oz. of liquid hits the 12 cup mark on my urn. It's usually enough for 7 or 8 mugs of cider.

If you don't have an urn, use a large pot on the stove and heat the cider mixture until the red hots are melted.

If I don't have cranberry juice available, I use 64 oz. of apple cider, and it's just as good. Honey prefers it that way, but everyone else I know likes it with the cranberry juice.

Either way, it smells DIVINE, and I've heard it tastes great, too!