Homemade Egg Nog Recipe!

Milk, eggs, brown sugar, and holiday spices

 make for a lovely holiday Egg Nog.

For this recipe you will need a thermometer. Which, in my opinion, is something any well stocked kitchen should have anyway.

My Recipe:
Measure 1 cup of milk for each person you plan to serve into a sauce pan.
For every cup of milk add the following:
1 egg
4 Tbs brown Sugar
a dash of vanilla flavoring
a pinch of each: ground cloves, ground cinnamon, and ground nutmeg.

Directions: 
1. Whisk together milk and egg in sauce pan, with burner as lowest heat. Stir constantly and slowly increase the heat until the mixture, measured with a thermometer, reaches 160 degrees F (71 C). This is to make sure the egg is pasteurized. **
2. Once the mixture reaches 160 degrees remove immediately from heat, over cooking the mixture will cause it to turn it into a custard (which makes a nice egg nog bread pudding if you add bread, not that I know that from personal experience or anything).
3. Add remaining ingredients adjusting spices to taste.
4. Serve warm or cold with a pinch of cinnamon on top.

**This method of pasteurization is recommended by the USDA Food Safety and Inspections Services: "To make a recipe safe that specifies using eggs that aren't cooked, heat the eggs in a liquid from the recipe over low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture reaches 160 °F. Then combine it with the other ingredients and complete the recipe" -per their website at time of this posting.