I know it's a couple of days after St. Patrick's Day and spring is coming up and we're all supposed to be thinking about flowers and running through meadows and wearing shorts, but I hate spring and summer and I'm not quite ready to release winter from my cold hands yet. So, here's a hot chocolate recipe with a little kick.

It's the Bachelor Buzz, and besides hot chocolate it contains raspberry syrup, hazelnut syrup, and espresso. I'm not quite sure what makes this bachelor-ish, but pretend you're drinking it in some swingin' pad.

It's going to be March in a few days, a month I truly hate. March means warm weather is on its way (ugh) and March Madness basketball (again, ugh), so it's one of my least favorite times of year. But it's still winter, and it's cold out there in many parts of the country, so there's still time to down some tasty winter drinks.

Forbes.com has a list of the best winter cocktails, including this one called a Bourbon Furnace, which is a hot cider concoction, with cloves, cinnamon, and, well, bourbon. Full recipe after the jump.

Winter has made a comeback in the Northeast today. We're supposed to get 8 to 10 inches in my area, so I'm in one of those "hot chocolate, read a book, watch some DVDs on the couch" sort of moods, so I thought I'd post a hot chocolate recipe.

But this isn't just for one cup of hot chocolate, it's a mix you can store so you don't have to keep making one cup at a time. I've been meaning to try the recipe that Tyler Florence made on one of his holiday shows on Food Network a while back but I haven't. This one comes from Epicurious.com and it has a hint of vanilla (or maybe it's more than a hint, who knows). It makes 24 servings.

The high today where I am topped off at 22 degrees. That was in the daytime, with the sun shining, so you can imagine how cold it's going to get tonight (I'm not complaining, I actually love this weather). So since it's so cold and since it's winter, how about warming yourself up with a nice Gin Toddy?

We've had a lot of winter toddy drinks here at Slashfood, but there's something about hot gin and cinnamon that intrigues me. I'm not a big drinker of hot alcoholic drinks, but I'm going to make this tonight and curl up on the couch with a good book.

Mmmm...hot chocolate. Is there any other drink that is so tied-in and associated with a season than hot chocolate's association with winter? It truly is the comfort drink of the season.

For this happy hour, I figured I'd find something that was hot chocolate, but kicked up a notch* for the adults who read Slashfood. This Grown-Up Hot Chocolate has Ghirardelli chocolate chips and cocoa as the main ingredient, along with amaretto. You can substitute a hazelnut, orange, or coffee liqueur or peppermint schnapps or extract. The link above has a bunch of other winter cocktail recipes too, including Baroque, Glogg, and Silk Stocking.

* Seriously, I don't mean this in an "Emeril Lagasse" sort of way.

Shaken & Stirred, the New York Times column written by Jonathan Miles, is one of my favorite food/drink reads. I don't know why William Hamilton doesn't do the column anymore, but Miles is good too, and he has a good one up this week. He talks about how we get all this funky drinks during the winter, the ones with seasonal flavors and spices that we don't get the rest of the year: sugar, ginger, cream, eggnog, those sorts of things. He says to just go with the season and try out some of these drinks.

Like the Gingerbread Apple Cocktail, which mixes ginger and cognac liqueur, vanilla vodka, apple cider together in a glass that has honey or cookies crumbs around the rim. Hmmm...it had me until the part about the rim. Cookie crumbs, really? I'm not a fan of cocktails that lean towards a dessert, but this is funky enough to try.

So winter officially greeted us the other day and the cold is here to stay for the next couple of months or so. We all have our own drinks to warm us up in December, January, and February: hot chocolate, coffee, tea, cider, etc. And some people go the booze route (The Booze Route - there's a good name for a band). The folks over at the Guardian books blog have dived into the novels of Charles Dickens and found out he's really the place to go to if we want to get ideas for winter drinks.

Besides recipes for hot punch (from A Christmas Carol), you also get info on how to make Wassail (from The Pickwick Papers), Purl (from The Old Curiosity Shop), and something called Smoking Bishop, which is from A Christmas Carol and features a lot of red wine. God bless us everyone!

Looking for a holiday eggnog with a slightly different twist? If so, you might be interested in checking out this one created by Chef Guillermo Pernot, the concept chef at Philadelphia's Cuba Libre. It's on the menu at the restaurant through the end of December, but if you don't happen to be in the area, they've happily offered us the recipe so that Slashfood readers can make it at home. It makes two quarts and can be stored for up to a week in the fridge.

It's really chilly here in the Northeast. I love the cold weather, it's just that the first big chill of the season can be shocking, especially since we had such an oddly warm October. This is the first time I had to turn on the heat this fall.

So how about some hot chocolate? Having a nice hot mug of hot chocolate on a cold evening is one of the great things in life. Here's a recipe for Easy Mexican Hot Chocolate (which includes cinnamon and chili powder) and here's one for Avenue' S Hot Chocolate (though I've never had Valrhona chocolate). Here's one that uses coffee from The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, and Jamie Oliver has one he calls The Best Hot Chocolate. I wanted to try this recipe for Hot Cocoa and Homemade Marshmallows from Tyler Florence last year but didn't. I'll correct that this holiday season (though I have to admit I'll probably go with packaged marshmallows or Fluff instead of making my own).

I'm not sure how cold it is where you are, but here tonight it's supposed to be around 9 degrees (and with the wind, etc, etc it's even colder). So we need something to keep us warm. You could try tea, you could try soup, maybe sitting in front of a fireplace. You could even try cutting open the carcass of a large dead animal and crawling inside, like in one of the Star Wars movies.

Or, you could make a hot alcoholic drink. If you're alone, you can make a Hot Toddy. If you're having a party with thirty of more people, you could make a Hot Cider Punch. Either way, you'll warm up quick. To paraphrase the Campbell's commercial: "Warm up to alcohol, booze is good food."