The Mrs.

Sinterklaas Recipe: Kruidnootjes

Kruidnootjes (roughly translated as: spicey nuts) are an important part of the Sinterklaas celebration. When Sinterklaas and his Pieten arrive in The Netherlands, there are large crowds of children waiting for them. The Pieten carry sacks filled with kruidnootjes, pepernoten and other candy and they throw these into the crowds. You can imagine this is welcomed with a lot of cheering and begging for more by the children, who collect as many kruidnoten/pepernoten as they can.

Kruidnootjes

Ingredients:

• 250 gr. self raising flour
• 125 gr. dark caster sugar
• 100 gr. soft butter
• 2 tablespoons speculaaskruiden*
• 3 tablespoons milk

Preheat the oven up to 150° Celcius.

Sieve the flour in a bowl and make a little dimple in the middle. In the dimple add the sugar, butter, speculaaskruiden, the milk and a little bit of salt and crumble these ingredients through the flour. Knead until you have a flexible dough. Form little balls (the size of a small marble) with this dough, put them on an oven plate and bake them for 20 minutes, until they are brown. (I baked them in two portions, because you don't want to put them too close together on the plate to avoid them sticking together.) Let it cool off and then eat them. According to my little ones it's the most yummy when you eat them with handfuls at the same time ;-)

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,

Tuesday, November 24, 2009