While you're frying up some eggs and bacon, we're cooking up something else: a way to celebrate today's food holiday.

If you need something to warm you up in these cold winter months, a hot buttered rum might be just the ticket (provided you’re of age, of course).

Warmed alcoholic beverages are particularly popular at this time of year; warm apple cider and mulled wine are often served to help heat up guests when, baby, it's cold outside. One of the more well-known warm beverages is the hot toddy.

Traditionally, a hot toddy combines an alcohol (bourbon, Scotch, rye, dark rum or brandy) with hot water, honey and spices. A hot buttered rum - a variation of a toddy –  incorporates, as you probably guessed, butter and rum into the recipe.

Rum became very popular with colonists after they learned that sugarcane by-products like molasses could be distilled into rum. As rum was brought back to Europe from the colonies, rum-spiked drinks became widely available.

A hot buttered rum starts out by making a batter. This isn’t your typical cake or pancake batter. Instead, it’s a bit of butter, some sugar and spices (nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon and allspice are popular choices) muddled together. Equal parts of rum and water are added to fill the glass. Voila – you’ve just made a hot buttered rum.

For additional variations, try a dark or spiced rum in your recipe.