Make Glögg to Serve or a Mix to Give as Gifts

By Sandy Hu
A new video for Video Friday

All this week, Special Fork bloggers have been featuring some of their favorite holiday entertaining recipes. Today’s recipe doubles as a fragrant and warming drink to serve at your holiday party or to give as a gift if you’re going to a party.

Glögg is a Scandinavian mulled wine drink; we’re preparing the seasoning mix. The recipe was developed when I was a PR representative for the California Raisin Advisory Board in the heyday of the Dancing Raisins campaign.

Our test kitchen developed this recipe as a holiday gift to magazine food editors to provide inspiration for the next year’s holiday food pages. We packaged the mix with a bottle of red wine, and produced an elegantly imprinted recipe card with directions for how to make and use the mix.

This recipe is very simple and doesn’t need a video demonstration, but often, we like to shoot these quickies anyway, just to show just how easy they are to make. Sometimes, though, the simplest are the most troublesome. If you do look at this video, you will notice, I talk about making “a sign” for the package when I mean, of course, “a label.” What was she thinking, you may ask? When the cameras are turned on, heaven only knows.

This drink will make your house smell like Christmas. For a non-alcoholic version, you could substitute apple cider or apple juice for the wine and omit the aquavit or vodka. Be sure to omit the sugar cubes, too, or your drink will be far too sweet.

Glögg Mix
Peel from 1/2 large orange, cut in a spiral strip
1 teaspoon whole cloves
3/4 cup California raisins
1/3 cup whole blanched almonds
12 small sugar cubes
2 cinnamon sticks, halved
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom

1. Heat oven to 250° F. Stud orange peel with cloves; set aside. Place studded orange peel in spiral form on small baking sheet and bake until dry, about 45 minutes. Cool completely.
2. In small bowl, combine raisins, almonds, sugar cubes, cinnamon sticks and cardamom. Toss gently to coat raisins with cardamom. Add orange peel and seal in plastic bag up to 2 months.
3. To give as a gift, repackage in a food-safe cellophane bag. Tie with ribbon. Include instructions for making glögg. Give with a bottle of dry red wine, if desired. If making more than one batch, combine each batch separately for even distribution of ingredients.

Instructions for making glögg:
In a 3-quart enamel or stainless steel saucepan combine glögg mix with 1 bottle (750 milliliters) dry red wine. Bring to simmering over low heat; simmer 5 minutes. Add 3/4 cup aquavit or vodka; simmer 2 minutes. Ladle into heatproof punch cups or mugs, including some of the raisins and almonds in each serving. Serve with small spoons.

Note: blanched almonds are the ones that are white; with no skin. If you have whole almonds here’s how to blanch them.

Recipe adapted from California Raisins

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