St. Nicholas pepernoten, spiced little cookies

Pepernoten

This is an old recipe. It is from the time when people were still fasting before the christmas period. This means that there are no dairy or eggs used in this recipe. I personally do sometimes use milk or butter, simply because I like the flavour.
There is pepper in this recipe, as you can see in the name of the cookies. There are also other spices in there, which were shipped in from Asia by the Dutch trading ships and because of that fairly soon already common goods in The Netherlands, while they were still relatively unknown in other European countries.

Origin: The Netherlands

Difficulty: easy
Time: 30 minutes preparation, 1 night waiting, 20 minutes baking
Yield: about 50, depending on the size you make them

Equipment:

• Oven
• Kitchen machine

Ingredients:

• 125 grams sprouted flour
• 125 grams sprouted rye flour
• 1/2 tablespoon baking powder
• 100 ml honey
• 1 tablespoon of maple syrup
• 1/8 teaspoon black peppercorns
• 1/8 teaspoon cloves
• 3 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon cardamom
• 1 teaspoon aniseed
• 100 ml water (I often use buttermilk as this prepares the flour better for digestion)
• a pinch of salt
• a bit of oil or ghee

Directions:

• Put all the spices in the kitchen machine and grind to a powder consistency. alternatively use all powder, though the flavour will be more rounded when using the whole spices and grinding them yourself.
• Make sure honey is fluid, if need be warm it up a bit au bain marie.
• Mix baking powder and flour, make sure there are no lumps in there.
• Mix in the spices.
• Mix in the honey and maple syrup
• Add the water (or buttermilk) bit by bit, maybe you will need a bit less or a bit more than the 100 ml. Try to achieve a nice soft dough.
• Put it in the fridge overnight.
• Preheat the oven to 180C
• Rub a bit of oil or ghee on a baking tray, or use a silicon mat.
• Make balls the size of a marble, or cut squares the size of marbles from the dough. Make sure the balls lay relatively close to each other, so that they rise up in stead of sideways.
• Bake in a preheated oven for about 15 to 20 minutes, check after about 10 minutes how they are fairing. When you have made your balls small, they may need to go out after 10 minutes, when they are average it takes about 15 and big ones take about 20 minutes, use your nose and your eyes to check where they are.

Possible substitutions:

1. butter - coconut, tallow, etc. depending on which flavour you can handle. In this case I would go for deodorised coconut oil if at all possible.
2. sugar - honey, but then leave out the milk.
3. sprouted flour - plain flour

St. Nicholas, 5 December

I am very late with writing this blog post, but better late than never.
We are educating our children at home in the Waldorf tradition. This is one of the reasons why we celebrate St. Nicholas in our home. As I am Dutch, this only adds to wanting to celebrate it. We celebrate it in a traditional way. 

I always decorate the Nature Table in the theme as you can see above. I have made several of the decorations myself with wool, felt and silk. I still have several others to make. I have the kits for it, but this is a slow process, due to priorities being as they are.

When we celebrate it we keep an eye on when the arrival of St. Nicholas is in The Netherlands. From then onwards I let the children put their shoe out to get a little gift in them, which is a nice pencil, bit of chocolate, some bees wax, a pretty gem stone, crafting yarn, wool roving or so.

On the last day of November when they put out their shoes they know that the advent calendar will be in there the next morning, I love giving the advent calendar on that day.

On the day itself we always have the traditional Dutch Pea Soup for dinner, this we eat together with sourdough rye bread. It is just the way I grew up, so I still do that. During the weeks before I have done my St. Nicholas baking, so I have made kruidnootjes, pepernoten, speculatius, filled speculatius, taaitaai, banketstaaf and such. These we have already had since I started baking, but I like to make sure that we have enough for the day itself.

In the evening we receive a letter from St. Nicholas. In this letter he explains that his helpers have put the gifts for all the family members in various places on our home and that the children can search for them. 
The gifts are useful gifts and things they really like. I always make sure that we stay in budget as I am of the opinion that it is all in good fun and should not cost a lot of money. 

The children love it when I read out the hints on where the gifts are and to go out a find them. We do this one by one so that everyone gets to see what everyone gets. Once all gifts have been unpacked we have hot chocolate with whipped cream and some of the baked goods. Usually we have some left overs of that for a couple of more days.

Speculatius spice mix

As I do not live in The Netherlands any more it isn't easy for me to get hold of speculatius spice mix these days, fortunately it is very easy to make myself.
Usually at the end of November I make a preserving jar full of it. I tend to use a LOT of it in the month of December for my St. Nicolas and Yuletide baking. And just in case I do not finish it, I can continue making speculatius biscuits until it is all finished.

This is what it looks like.

Origin: Dutch

Difficulty: easy

Time: 10 minutes

Traditional, Primal, Paleo, Vegetarian, etc

Equipment:

• preserving jar
• measuring spoons

Ingredients:

• 5 tablespoons and 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon and 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 tablespoon and 1 teaspoon clove
• 2 teaspoons ginger
• 2 teaspoons white pepper
• 1 teaspoon cardamom
• 1 teaspoon anisseed

Directions:

• All need to be powder, so in case you only have the whole part, pulverise it.
• Put all in the preserving jar, stir, done!

St. Nicholas Kruidnootjes, spiced small biscuit balls

As I am Dutch I really like making traditional Dutch treats during the St. Nicholas time. These are one of them.

Origin: Dutch

Difficulty: easy

Yield: about 80 to 100 kruidnootjes

Time: 1 hour 15 minutes

Traditional, Vegetarian

Equipment:

• kitchen machine or pastry cutter
• baking tray
• oven

Ingredients:

• 150 grams sprouted flour
• 100 grams cold butter
• 75 grams rapadura, sucanat, coconut sugar or maple sugar
• 5 grams baking powder
• 10 grams speculatius spice mix
• pinch of sea salt
• milk

Things to do ahead:

• several days ahead: sprout your grains and make the sprouted flour
• make speculation spice mix

Directions:

• Put all the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix well.
• Cut the butter in with a pastry cutter or do it in the kitchen machine
• Knead to a ball while adding little by little some milk to make it a nice and somewhat firm biscuit dough.
• Once you have a nice ball put it in a bowl, covered, in the refrigerator for at the minimum half an hour, but overnight is just fine as well. I prefer leaving it in overnight as it is easier to work with when it has stood around for a bit.
• Preheat your oven to 170C / 325F / Gas3.
• Put baking paper on your baking tray.
• Make small balls out of your dough and put those on your baking tray. If they want to roll away, push them onto the baking paper a bit, so they stick. My children love helping with this. But do make sure that the small balls have a similar size, else you may have the problem that some will be nearly black and others not done yet by the time you want to get them out of the oven. If you end up with the situation that they are all different, check regularly how they are fairing and taking out the ones that are done and leave the rest in until they are cooked. It can be done, it is just more hassle, but sometimes totally worth it when the children help out :-)
• Make sure you put the small balls a little away from each other as they still rise a bit.
• Baking takes anywhere between 10 to 15 minutes depending on the size of your balls. 

Variety ideas:

• Dip them partially or fully in some melted chocolate (chocolade kruidnootjes)
• Dip them in melted white chocolate or any other chocolate you like and dust them with cocoa powder (truffel kruidnootjes)

Possible substitutions:

1. butter - coconut, tallow, etc. depending on which flavour you can handle. In this case I would go for deodorised coconut oil if at all possible.
2. sugar - honey, but then leave out the milk.
3. sprouted flour - plain flour