Kruidnoten

“Kruidnoten” is a festive snack, which we eat during “Sinterklaas” on the 5th of December. It can only be found in stores from October until early December, before the Sinterklaas feast.
Its origin dates back to 1593. Originally created by a certain doctor to strengthen the stomach.
This recipe covers both the original Kruidnoten as the chocolate variant.

Ingredients

Kruidnoten

– 250 grams wheat flour

– 2 teaspoons baking powder

– 125 grams brown caster sugar

– 1½ tablespoons speculaas spices

– 125 grams butter

– ¼ teaspoons salt

– 30 ml milk

Optional

– 150 grams of pure chocolate

Speculaas spices

– 8 teaspoons ground cinnamon

– 2 teaspoons ground nutmeg

– 2 teaspoons ground cloves

– 1 teaspoons ground ginger

– 1 teaspoons ground cardamon

– 1 teaspoons ground anise seeds

Preparation

Speculaas spices

• 1) Use an empy closeable jar or something similar and add the following: 8 teaspoons (tsp) of ground cinnamon, 2 tsp ground nutmeg, 2 tsp ground cloves, 1 tsp ground ginger, 1 tsp ground cardamom and 1 tsp ground anise seeds.
• 2) Stir well and taste afterwards. If the taste of cinnamon is most dominated, it’s mixed well.

Batter making

• 3) Start by adding 125 grams of soft butter to a big bowl. Then add the following: 125 grams of brown caster sugar, 1½ tablespoon of speculaas spices and ¼ teaspoon of salt.
• 4) Mix the ingredients by hand with a whisk or an electric mixer. During this process , add the first 15 ml of milk, and keep mixing until you have a thick mixture. Then add the remaining 15 ml of milk and stir again.
• 5) Now add the 250 grams of wheat flour and 2 teaspoons of baking powder by using a sieve. Mix these until you have a cookie dough, which mostly can easily fall apart.
• 6) From this moment we need to continue to fold the dough by hand until we have a solid dough. Spread some flour on your workbrench before doing this. Tip: if the dough still falls apart like sand, then adding a few drops of milk will help in the kneading proces. Or add some flour when it’s too sticky.
• 7) Once you have a solid dough, cut this into two evenly pieces. Then roll each of them out with your hands into a long shape as that of a rolling pin. Then cut these long shapes in their length, into four evenly pieces.
• 8) Now create the kruidnoten shape by first cutting 1 cm length pieces out of the long pieces we created earlier. Then Roll these small pieces into a marble and place them on a oven plate. Use baking paper before doing so.

Baking the kruidnoten

• 9) Pre-heat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius. Before baking the kruidnoten, we need to flattern them a little by pressing them downwards just a little. This way they don’t roll all over the oven plate. Don’t worry they will rise again during the baking proces.
• 10) Once the oven has the right temperature, bake the kruidnoten for 35 minutes or longer on the low temperature of around 160 degrees Celsius.

Chocolate dipped kruidnoten (optional)

• 11) For this we need two pots, one big and the other smaller. Or instead of the small pot, you can use a smaller glas bowl instead. This will allow us to melt the chocolate by using the au bain-marie technique.
• 12) Start by filling the big pot with a thick layer of hot water, put it on a stove and set the heat to medium. Once the water boils, place the smaller pot above the big pot, so that the steam can heat this pot.
• 13) Then slice about 150 grams of dark or milk chocolate in small pieces and place them in the small pot. Stir the pieces of chocolate occasionaly with a spoon, from bottom to top. Do this until all pieces are melted and turned into a liqued like mixture.
• 14) Now dip the kruidnoten into the melted chocolate. Use a fork that’s on room temperature and drop a few or two kruidnoten at a time in the chocolate mixture. Stir the kruidnoten through the mixture until they are fully covered. Then pick them out with the fork and allow the excessive chocolate to drop off, before putting the kruidnoot on a baking paper to cool down. Repeat these steps for all others, depending on how many chocolate covered kruidnoten you want.

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