Whipped (or heavy) cream topping with shaved chocolate and cinnamon and/or nutmeg sprinkles can enhance many hot cocktails and drinks. Enjoy these 10 FINE Coffee Drinks!

Compiling cocktails ingredients can be a shopping experience that can quickly become frustrating, but the following are several "essentials" you should always have on hand when the cold-weather season comes around — and you're ready to create the perfect hot cocktail or drink.

• Cinnamon — This is one of the traditional holiday spices, but it should be a staple in your supply cabinet or bar for the winter months. Ground cinnamon is needed for coffee drinks, eggnogs, hot punches and more. It's a great idea to have both ground cinnamon and whole sticks, which make sensational stirrers for most hot-chocolate drinks, in particular, and many hot wine concoctions. Note that cinnamon sugar is great for sprinkling in coffee drinks or on top of whipped or heavy cream.

• Chocolate — No wintertime bar should be without chocolate?and in its many forms (liquid, powered, shaved / grated, and don't forget to include unsweetened). The Chocolate Covered Raspberry cocktail featured in FINE LIVING's "Hot-Toddy Winter" cocktails package is a prime example of why you need to have chocolate in stock. For a special touch, sprinkle chocolate shavings (dark chocolate for health benefits) on top of any hot drink that's topped with whipped or heavy cream.

• Cloves — If you want to add a rich, spicy flavor to any hot drink, then you must stock your bar with this essential ingredient. You don't have to be a molecular mixology expert to know the key to mixing drinks in this new cocktail generation is to be creative and unafraid to create a new taste experience, and spices such as cloves can help to serve this purpose. You can also put together fun garnishes by inserting cloves into oranges, lemon and /or lemon wedges.

  What is a Clove? According to encyclopedic sources, cloves are aromatic dried flower buds of a tree in the family Myrtaceae, and it's native to Indonesia and used as a spice in cuisine all over the world.

• Heavy Cream — There's absolutely nothing like "fresh" whipped cream, and even though store-bough whipped cream serves its purpose, if you want to make sure your guest know you've gone the extra mile (or in this case, a few added minutes) for them, whip up a batch of heavy cream to top your hot-toddy cocktails.

  The Perfect Heavy Cream: It's easy?simply place a small stainless-steel mixing bowl of heavy cream into a bigger steel bowl filled with ice. Add a small amount of confectioner's sugar and whisk for several minutes to create the perfect hot-drink topping.