Christmas begins

This is the first year as a married couple, its our first Christmas as husband and wife that we will celebrate alone. Don't get me wrong I love spending Christmas with family and fortunately we have spent many with my Swedish family in Gothenburg. I have loved these tradition, ritual filled holidays, having my husband experience these with me. This year we will create our own traditions. And these traditions began today. Decorating the tree while eating swedish pepparkakor and drinking Glögg, both made from scratch, just the way I like it! This is the first of may traditions I want to create. 
The inspiration and motivation that made me dare to try to make my own Glögg was a new friend, Jasmin thank you for showing me the light!







Glögg
(I made half this amount for 2 people which made about 3 small glasses each)

1 L of apple juice

12 cardamom pods

12 cloves

3 small whole sticks of cinnamon

1 small piece of nutmeg

1 small piece of fresh ginger
and/or. 20 black peppercorns or 20 cumin seeds if you want to try a
spicier version 

1 bottle of wine 

1/2 bottle of port 

60 g split almonds 

60 g raisins

The spices are cooked for one hour with the apple juice. Then
remove all the spices and add the wine, port, raisins and almonds and let it simmer gently for 5-10 min. It's best to then let it rest a little bit and reheat it later for serving. Both the spices, alcohol, almonds and raisins can easily be adjusted according to your own preference.

Little tip, I added the rind of half and orange for half this batch, which added a little extra depth to the flavors.
Yasmin also suggested making a 'white wine 
Glögg: 
If you're making the white wine version you use light port and can 
choose whether to use light raisins, whether to add a few slices of 
lemon/lime at the end and whether to substitute some of the apple 
juice with elderflower juice.
 

French Pepparkakor 
(
recipe originally from cookbook Konditorns 
bästa by Signe Maria Bengtsson)
These ginger cookies or rather pepper cookies translated literally were inspired by the ones baked at Christmas by my Swedish family. I must admit I have to ask them what their secret is as mine just would not come out as thin or as spiced as theirs.
175 gr butter
1 dl sugar (I used brown)
3/4 light syrup (as I didn't have this I used honey, however I believe maple syrup would have been a much better choice)
1/2 peeled almonds (if you cant find peeled almonds you can easily peel them yourself after you have cooked them in water till their 'skin' gets loose, this shouldn't be more than a a minute or two in boiling water.
1 1/2 tbsp ground cinnamon
1 tbsp ground ginger 
1 egg
3/4 tbsp  baking powder
6-7dl flour (I used unbleached white flour, I would not recommend using whole wheat flour for this, we all know I would have as I prefer it but here it's going to ruin the cookies)
1 tbsp cardamon (this wasnt in the original recipe but I love this spice)
1 tsp salt (I always add salt to sweet recipes, its adds a slight depth to the flavors)

I used a mixed spice blend which had all these spices as well as nutmeg. I used about 1tbsp of the mixed spice, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1tsp cardamon.

Melt the butter, sugar, and syrup/honey in a thick bottom pan, alow to slowly melt and then bubble. Chop your almonds into slivers and add into the butter mix. Then add the flour, spices, egg and baking powder, mix. Once cool, put in fridge for 1 day. 

I have to admit these were not even close to the pepparkakor my family makes. I think my mistake with these were that I 'didn't see the mention of letting the dough rest for 24hours in the fridge'..this made the dough very hard to roll out without it splitting and breaking also I think the spices would have come through a lot stronger if I had waited. But despite lacking in spice and not being leaf thin, for being my first attempt they tasted delish along with my home made  
Glögg and I felt Christmas fill our little home.