Muriel's Kitchen FoundationSchool Garden Projects and Food Education
Muriel's Kitchen FoundationHomemade pepernoten with only the good stuff, no nasties! Super easy to make, super fun too and your kitchen smells great!
There is a whole bunch of spices that make up the well known speculaas kruiden or rather speculaas spices as kruiden refer to herbs… anyway here’s how you can make this heartwarming mix at home!
Baking pepernoten is like therapy for kids during crazy December
What you’ll need for the speculaas mix (Makes about 4 tablespoons)
– 1 Tablespoon ground cinnamon
– 2 teaspoons ground nutmeg
– 1 teaspoon ground cloves
– 1 teaspoon ground cardamon
– 1 teaspoon white pepper
– 1 teaspoon ground coriander
– 1 teaspoon ground ginger
– 1 teaspoon ground anise seeds
– 1 teaspoon ground mace
Combine the spices well before you add them to a cookie or pepernoten mix.
Alternatively you can buy the ready mixed ‘koek kruiden’ or ‘speculaas kruiden’ at your favourite Dutch supermarket or toko.
What you’ll need for about 50 pepernoten:
– 100 gram soft butter
– 125 gram brown sticky sugar (the Dutch use ‘basterdsuiker’, Old Brown Sugar will do the trick)
– 250 gram self-raising flour
– 2 teaspoons speculaas spices
– a dash of milk
Mix the butter, sugar, flour and the spices with a electrical mixer of a foodprocessor, add a bit of milk to create a solid but not sticky dough.
Roll it up into a ball, cover it with cling wrap and let it chill for about 15 minutes to an hour (this way the spices can draw nicely into the dough).
Preheat the oven to 160 C.
Remove the dough from the fridge and roll little balls from the dough. Cover a baking tray with baking paper and place the little dough balls onto the baking tray, gently squash the balls flat just a little and bake in the oven for about 10 – 15 minutes until light brown.
Let’s see if you can wait for these typical Dutch spiced cookies to cool down 😉
