The Mrs.

Sinterklaas Recipe: Gevulde Speculaas

As promised I am going to share some Sinterklaas recipes with you. Be prepared for a lot of sweetness, because sugar is an important part of almost all of these recipes!

But before I start with the actual recipe for 'gevulde speculaas' I wanted to add a little explanation about this whole Sinterklaas celebration, because I received some questions and noticed that some people didn't really understand what it all is about.

It's a holiday on it's own, and for us it has nothing to do with Christmas, although the English/American Santa derives from the Dutch Sinterklaas. It's celebrated on december 5th, with presents for the children and the exchange of funny teasing poems between adults. You can read all about it on this page.

We do celebrate Christmas too, on december 25th. But most people don't exchange gifts during Christmas and the holiday is mostly more focussed on the Christian meaning, the tree, the lights and being together with loved ones.

Having explained that; are you hungry yet? Then here is the first Sinterklaas recipe:

Gevulde Speculaas

Ingredients

• 250 gr. self raising flour
• 2 tablespoons speculaaskruiden (herb mix)*
• 150 gr. dark caster sugar
• 150 gr. butter
• 2 tablespoons milk
• 300 gr. almond paste**
• 1 egg yolk
• (optional: sliced almons for decoration)

Preheat the oven up to 150° Celcius.

Put the flour, the speculaaskruiden, the sugar, the butter (in small pieces) and the milk in a bowl and knead until you have a dough. At this point you could choose to roll the dough into some foil and put it into the refrigerator to let it soak up all the herbs, but I have to confess I mostly am too impatient for that, so I skip that step.

Now you split the dough in two equal parts. The first part you roll onto a greased oven plate in whatever shape you want, could be a square, a heart.. Smear the almond paste on top of the dough, but leave some space at the edges. Then add the second part of the dough on top of this and close the sides, enclosing the almond paste.
Now you can decorate with the sliced almons and cover with the egg yolk.

Put it into the oven and bake the speculaas for about 30-45 minutes (check if it's golden brown). Then get it out of the oven and make sure it cools off and gets a bit harder before you start cutting it (but not too long, because it's delicious when it's still warm :-))

Bon appetit!

* Speculaaskruiden is a Dutch mixture of 8 parts cinnamon, ground,; 2 parts nutmeg; 2 parts cloves; 1 part cardamon; 1 part white pepper and 1 part ginger ground,

** Almond paste is something you can buy here already made at the store, but you could make it yourself too. For that you need:

100 gr white almonds ground
100 gr granulated sugar
0,5-0,7 egg
grated peel of a half lemon

Put in a bowl the almond ground, the granulated sugar and lemonpeel. Add enough but not too much egg, to make it one whole mass but not too sticky on the outside. Roll it in plastic foil and put it in the refrigerator.

PS. Tomorrow I'll draw the winner of my giveaway!

Tuesday, November 17, 2009