In the past couple of years that I’ve spent more time at home for some reason or another (cannot quite pinpoint why, mmh), I’ve grown keen on making edible gifts for my friends. I find it a great idea to make something with my own hands, something unique and personalized, away from all the screen we’re forced to look at so much these days. The idea started from how much we missed spending time with friends and eating together. Since we both love to cook, that was one of the main recreational activities, to invite friends over and enjoy a good meal or a cup of coffee with a dessert together. So, to try to fill that void, we started baking and cooking and delivering our goods to our friends around town. The biggest success so far have been our Saffron Cinnamon Rolls, and no wonder. After I received a big amount of apples, however, I started thinking about what I could do with them and, given the winter season, I decided to make a non-alcoholic mulled wine.
If you plan to make this apple glögi concentrate from apples like me, the first thing you’ll need to do is to make your own apple juice. I tried different methods to do this, but definitely the best result was using the cold pressed juicer. In this way you’ll obtain a cloudy apple juice that’s full of flavor and structure. With my juicer I could obtain 2 liters of juice for every 3kg of apples.
Tip: juice a couple of lemons along with the apples to keep the juice from oxidising and therefore maintaining a light color.
Don’t throw the leftover juice pulp! I have a great recipe coming up in the next few days that will teach you a brilliant way to use this discard.
Did you know?
Glögi, or glögg, is a traditional spiced winter drink of all Nordic Countries that dates back to at least the 16th century. Originally alcoholic, nowadays glögi is mainly found in shops as a non-alcoholic drink, with fruit juice as its main ingredient. Glögi can be found both as a ready product that just needs heating up or as a concentrate that has to be diluted with water.
Non-alcoholic glögis are very common, I dare say much more common than alcoholic ones. The trouble is, often store-bought glögi tends to be too sweet for my taste, and and otherwise not tasty enough. Also, many of you, dear readers, don’t live in the Nordic countries and so that’s why I thought it would be nice to make my own glögi concentrate recipe that I could share with you.
This apple glögi concentrate can be stored in the refrigerator for up to a week, but it can just as easily be frozen and thawed at a later moment. I recommend to freeze it unsieved, and sieve the spices only later.
Apple Glögi Concentrate
Ingredients
- 1,5 l cloudy apple juice
- 300 g sugar
- 2 cinnamon sticks
- ½ vanilla stick
- 6 star anise
- 20 cloves
- 5 peppercorns
- 5 cardamoms
- ½ orange peel
- 10 g fresh ginger
Instructions
- Place the cloves, peppercorns and cardamoms in a mortar and crush them a bit to release the flavors.
- Place all the spices except the vanilla stick in a saucepan and warm them up to release their flavors.
- Pour the apple juice into the saucepan, add the sugar and mix until the sugar will have dissolved.
- Bring to a boil, lower the heat and let simmer for about 20 minutes.
- Sieve the glögi concentrate and bottle it up.
- Store in the refrigerator for up to a week or freeze.
- To make glögi, heat up the concentrate with water at a ratio 1 to 1. Enjoy the apple glögi warm.
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