Some of my friends throw a holiday party every year. I get to play bartender and spend most of the evening making drinks. I love it. Every year, we try out some new drinks and see what sticks. This year, a couple of good ideas smacked into a terrible one, and we got a pretty good drink out of it.

Schweddy Balls is probably my all-time favorite SNL bit. It’s a perfect parody of NPR, even 20 years later. I thought of it and its final line while sitting in a lodge during my anniversary. There was one of those “bavarian nut roaster” booths near by so spiced nuts were on the brain. From there I remembered one of the final lines of Schweddy Balls, a promise of future “fragrant flavored nuts”.

Not only have I been thinking a lot of Dave Arnold’s any nut orgeat recently, he mentioned a couple months ago on Cooking Issues that he planned on making a mixed nut orgeat.

I texted my friends Paul and Colin with the idea for a holiday spiced nut drink inspired by Pete Schweddy, and within a couple minutes they had the name - Pete Schweddy’s Famous Fragrant Nut Nog. Coming up with a recipe was simple.

I looked for spiced nuts recipes, I found one from Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen, my favorite food author. I made a double batch of this so I could have a nut milk and a nut creamer. I had some leftover nut milk, which I turned into orgeat.

Notes: Arnold’s recipe calls for Ticaloid 210s. He specifies that if Ticaloid is unavailable, you can substitute a 9:1 gum arabic : xanthan mixture. I can’t find a reasonably-sized source of ticaloid for a consumer. So 1.75g ticaloid and 0.2g xanthan becomes 1.575g gum arabic + 0.38g xanthan.
Dave Arnold mentioned on one of his last episodes of 2019 that nut-based creamers often incorporate sodium citrate to help emulsify the fat. So I added some of that.
The spiced orgeat here is a bonus. You could scale down your recipes if you wanted - why bother? You’ll find a use for the orgeat, I trust.

It's hard to photograph drinks that don't look great.

Spiced Nut Milk

  • 660 grams very hot water
  • 200 grams spiced nuts
  • 1.58 grams gum arabic
  • 0.38 gram xanthan gum

With a high-power blender, blend hot water and nuts and then pour this nut milk through a nut milk bag or other filter. Blend gums into nut milk in a blender.

You can harvest the nut solids after the straining step and turn it into some kind of baked good.

Spiced Nut Creamer & Orgeat

  • 660 grams very hot water
  • ~300 grams spiced nuts
  • 1.58 grams gum arabic
  • 0.38 gram xanthan gum
  • 0.75g sodium citrate
  • 420g sugar, divided (i used a mixture of brown and cane)

With a high-power blender, blend hot water and nuts and then pour this nut milk through a nut milk bag or other filter. Blend gums into nut milk in a blender. Blend 250g sugar into milk.

Reserve 500ml of creamer. Then make orgeat by blending 170g sugar into remaining nut milk. (This one ended up separating, so I added another quarter gram gum arabic and giving it a spin with a stick blender. It’s stayed in suspension ever since.)

Pete Schweddy's Famous Fragrant Nut Nog

  • 1.5oz spiced nut milk
  • 0.75oz spiced nut creamer
  • 0.75oz black rum
  • 0.75oz bourbon
  • egg yolk
  • drop saline solution
  • fresh nutmeg

Shake all but nutmeg on ice. Serve on ice in a rocks glass. You can also batch this - I shook two drinks at once to make a larger batch.

Grate fresh nutmeg on top of each drink. Make double entendres and enjoy.

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