Baking Love: Apple Speculaas Cake

Spring is supposed to start, but it still feels very wintery over here. So that is why I decided to share some wintery recipes with you this week for those last cold days. First there is a Dutch twist on an apple cake with speculaas. A spice mixture that we mostly use in winter time. If you can't find that, you can use a gingerbread mixture instead. We made this cake last week and it was a great success. The recipe for this easy and tasty cake come from Laura's Bakery.

Apple Speculaas Cake:
- 200 gr butter
- 200 gr sugar
- 8 gr vanilla sugar
- 4 eggs
- 200 gr self rising flour
- pinch of salt
- 2 large apples
- 4 tsp speculaas spices

Pre heat the oven to 175 degrees. Beat the butter, together with both sugars until they are creamy. Add the eggs 1 by 1 and beat until they are incorporated in the batter. Sift the flour, salt and speculaas spices into the bowl with the wet ingredients and mix until you have an airy batter. Peel and cube the apples, coat them with a bit of flour and scoop them into the batter. Stir well. Line a cake tin with baking paper. Pour the batter into the cake tin. Bake in the oven for about 1 hour. The cake is done when a toothpick comes out clean.

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Typical Dutch: Carrot Cake with Speculaas Spices

I made this bundt cake a few weeks ago because we had some carrots leftover. And what better to do than make carrot cake? This cake has a Dutch twist because there are speculaas spices in there which give this cake a wintery warm taste. You could use all spice blend if you can't get speculaas spices. I wanted to share this recipe before we head onto spring, which won't be very long. I am sure it will even taste great then, but I know that I stray away from wintery flavors naturally when spring hits. The original recipe comes from Over Eten. Nick took most of this cake to his work, and they loved it there.

Carrot Cake with Speculaas Spices:
- 240 ml sunflower oil
- 125 gr cane sugar
- 125 gr castor sugar
- 4 eggs
- 240 gr selfrising flour
- 280 gr carrots, grated
- 2 tbsp speculaas spices
- 1 tbsp cinnamon
- pinch of salt
- 50 gr pecan or walnuts

Pre heat the oven to 170 degrees. Make sure you grease the bundt pan unless you have a silicone one like we do. Mix oil, sugar and eggs first. Then sift the selfrising flour above the bowl with the salt, speculaas spices and cinnamon. Mix on low speed until you have a smooth batter. Then add in the carrots and nuts. Stir through the batter with a wooden spoon. Pour the batter in the bundt pan and bake in the oven for about 55 minutes. The cake is done when a toothpick comes out clean. Make sure the cake has cooled before removing the bundt pan.

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Sinterklaas: Pietenzakjes with Pumpkin and Feta

This is the last Sinterklaas related recipe that I will share this year. Unlike the two previous recipes this is a savoury snack that did it very well on the Sinterklaas celebration we had with friends. We were a bit early to celebrate but we had fun. I just snapped the picture before grabby hands ate them all. These snacks are supposed to look like the sacks that Piet uses to carry the presents for the children, but as you can see on the picture they are very misshapen. I was in doubt if I should share them at all with you, but they tasted so good, that I really had to. It is very typical of course that almost every time we try to make something pretty, we fail to do so ;) This recipe is also from Het Grote Sinterklaas Kookboek, but we adjusted the stuffing a bit to our taste.

Pietenzakjes with Pumpkin and Feta: (makes 20)

- 25 gr butter

- 200 gr pumpkin pieces (I used frozen ones)

- 150 gr feta

- handful of fresh chives

- 1 tsp speculaas spices

- 10 square dough sheets for savoury pie

- 1 egg

Heat the butter in a pan. Mix it with the pumpkin, 1 tbsp of water and a dash of salt. Cook this for about 15 minutes with a lid on the pan until the pumpkin is soft. Remove the lid and let the moisture evaporate. Make a mash from the pumpkin and spread it on a plate to cool down. 

Crumble the feta in a bowl with the speculaas spices and chives. Also add the pumpkin mash and spice it up with some (red) pepper to taste. Pre heat the oven to 180 degrees. Half the sheets of dough and spread them with the sticky side up. Scoop a spoon of pumpkin stuffing on 1 half of a piece of dough. Fold over the other half and press it close. Twist the upper side closed like a sack. 

Place some parchment paper on a baking tray and place the sacks on the paper. Cover them with an egg wash from the beaten egg. Place them in the oven for about 20 minutes.  

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Sinterklaas: Taaitaai

Today I have another Sinterklaas recipe for you. This typical Dutch treat is called Taaitaai. It is called that way because taai is the Dutch word for chewy and these cookies need to rest for a couple of days at least to get their typical structure and flavour. If I am totally honest, I never liked store bought Taaitaai much. But Nick does and when I had a Sinterklaas cookbook from the library, Nick requested we make those. I am really glad we did because homemade taaitaai is really delicious. Classic taaitaai is in a different shape, but we just rolled balls of the dough and this worked really well.

Taaitaai: (serves a few hungry people)
- 215 gr flour
- 215 gr rye or spelt flour
- 10 gr baking powder
- 4 tbsp ground anise seeds
- 140 gr honey
- 200 gr light brown castor sugar
- 1 egg
- 0.25 tsp salt

Pre heat the oven to 200 degrees. Sift both flours, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Add the anise seeds. Mix the honey and the sugar with 100 ml water in a pan and bring to a boil on low heat. Mix the wet ingredients with the dry, but be careful, it is very hot at this point.

Leave the mixture to cool a bit and then knead it till you have a dough. Line a baking tray with parchment paper. Tear pieces from the dough and roll them into little balls, Place them on the tray. Beat the egg and smear some egg wash on all cookies. Bake them for about 12 minutes.

Keep the taaitaai in an air tight container with a piece of bread for 4 days. Then remove the bread. Keep them for at least a week in the container but it can be up to a month. How longer you save them, the better they will taste. But if you have no time, they are already very tasty after 4 days,

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Sinterklaas: Slow Cooker Kruidnoten Fudge

Not only can you use your slow cooker to make dinner. It is great to make certain desserts in it too. You can make fudge in advance and just leave it in the fridge or freezer. It is a large amount of fudge that you will get out of one recipe ;) So please share with your friends for your own safety ;) I made a variation on fudge for the Dutch celebration of Sinterklaas, that will be on the evening of December 5th.

While the fudge is delicious, it has one downside: the cleaning ;) Of course it is a bit messy and sticky ;)

Slow Cooker Kruidnoten Fudge: (serves a lot, 3.5L slow cooker)
- 150 gr white chocolate
- 225 gr milk chocolate
- 1 can sweet condensed milk
- 1 tbsp powdered sugar
- couple handfuls of kruidnoten
- couple handfuls marshmallow

Place all ingredients in the pot and put it one hour on high without the lid. Stir every 10 minutes. Line a baking tray with parchment paper and transfer the liquid. And now for the hard part: leave the fudge overnight in the fridge to stiffen. Cut the fudge the next day with a warm knife.

A note on the marshmallow: ours melted in the fudge, which is delicious, but if you want bits of marshmallow, add it near the end. The kruidnoten you can add whenever you like.

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What to do with your leftover pepernoten?

So for the Dutchies out there. Sinterklaas is over and people will be massively shopping for their x-mas trees today. Almost everyone will recognise the fact that after Sinterklaas evening, they are having leftover pepernoten (officially kruidnoten. So today I will share some recipe that will fix your pepernoten problem :)

Bake a cake! In this pepernotencake you can toss 100 gr of the leftover cookies. Even if they have gone a bit stale, because they will turn soft in the oven anyway.

Are you more a dessert person, then try this pepernoten trifle. This is surely a good choice when you are eating with your family tonight, to hold on to this Sinterklaas feeling a little longer.

More into chocolate? These speculaas brownies can also be made with pepernoten. No problem at all :)

Lastly I want to share this cheesecake with a Dutch twist. Replace the bastogne cookies in the recipe by pepernoten and you are good to go!

I hope you all enjoyed Sinterklaas evening. We watched How to Train Your Dragon 2, while nomming on Sinterklaas candy and drinking hot chocolate. That is not traditional at all, but it was cozy.

Starting next week, we will be baking Christmas goods, so look forward to that :)

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Sinterklaas: Hartige Banketstaaf

Sinterklaas is getting closer and closer and we can't stop baking ;) In the past weekend we didn't go for a sweet treat though. But Nick chose to make a savoury variation on a banketstaaf. This is normally a flaky roll stuffed with almond paste. But in the savoury version minced meat is used. It is perfect for lunch but will also go well with a nice bowl of soup for an evening meal. We just ate tiny slices as an afternoon snack. The original recipe comes from the AH website.

Hartige Banketstaaf: (serves 8)
- 8 sheets of puff pastry
- 2 tbsp flour
- 250 gr vegetarian minced meat
- 0.5 tsp oregano
- 1 clove of garlic, minced
- 1 grilled bell pepper (from a jar), in tiny pieces
- cayenne pepper
- 1 egg yolk (leave out for a vegan version)

Pre heat the oven to 180 degrees. Defrost you puff pastry. Place the sheets of puff pastry on top of each other. Flour your work space and roll the puff pastry into a rectangle. Mix the minced meat with the bell pepper, garlic, oregano and cayenne to taste. With wet hands, form a sausage from the meat mixture. Lay the puff pastry on a baking sheet and place the sausage in the middle of the puff pastry. Close the pastry around the sausage and close the seam. Place the roll on the baking sheet with the seam down.
Beat the egg yolk and coat the top of the pastry with the yolk. Place in the oven for about 45 minutes.

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Sinterklaas: Schuddebuikjes Rotsjes

After we made the Schuddebuikjes Cake, we sill had a lot of left over schuddebuikjes. So we decided to make another treat with these little cookies. I found a recipe for these little chunky piles of chocolate with schuddebuikjes on Klein Stukje Dan. In the Netherlands we call these kind of treats Rotsjes, and the most common are those with peanuts. Because you only need 2 ingredients for this recipe, they are a budget friendly treat to make :) We choose to make these with white chocolate, but of course you can use any kind of chocolate you like.

Schuddebuikjes Rotsjes: (makes 15)
- 150 gr white chocolate
- 100 gr schuddebuikjes

Break the chocolate into small pieces. Melt 100 gr of the chocolate au-bain-marie. This means placing about 3 cm of boiling water in a pan, and place a bowl on top of the pan with the white chocolate. When melted, stir in the other 50 gram of chocolate.
Stir in as much schuddebuikjes until you have the consistency from the picture.
Scoop little piles of the mixture on a baking sheet with 2 teaspoons.
Leave them to cool in the fridge for at least an hour. You can keep these in the fridge until you serve them, otherwise they will melt.

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Sinterklaas: Chocolade kruidnoten Cake

I have another Sinterklaas recipe to share with typical Dutch ingredients. For this recipe I use chocolate coated kruidnoten in a cake. If you can not get hold of these, please just use a combination of small gingerbread cookies and chocolate chips. It will look different, but taste wise it will be pretty close. The original recipe is from Oh my Foodness.

Chocolade Kruidnoten Cake:
- 200 gr butter
- 250 gr sugar
- 250 gr selfrising flour
- 4 eggs
- 100 gr chocolade kruidnoten (I used a mix of milk, dark and white)

Pre heat the oven to 150 degrees.
Mix the butter with the sugar until creamy. Add in the eggs 1 by 1 and make sure each egg is fully incorporated in the batter before you add the next. Sift in the self rising flour and mix everything together. Do not over mix the batter.
Stir in about 3/4 of the chocolade kruidnoten.

Line a cake tin with a baking sheet and scoop the batter in the tin. Use the rest of the kruidnoten on top of the cake. You can crumble them too if desired. Place it in the oven for about 60-70 minutes, until a toothpick comes out the cake clean. Leave the cake to cool for about 5 minutes before you lift it out of the tin and leave it to cool further.

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Sinterklaas: Schuddebuikjes Cake

Because the Sinterklaas festivities are almost upon us, it is time to blog a Dutch treat again. Sinterklaas is a Dutch childrens celebration on December 5th. It is actually the festivity where Santa Claus is based on. With this festivity comes a lot of typical Dutch candy that is only available around this time of year. Like kruidnoten, a ginger like mini cookie. However we also have schuddebuikjes. This is an even smaller cookie that tastes like speculaas, something that is also eaten a lot around Sinterklaas, but available all year round. Normally it is used as a bread topping. But today I used it in a cake. I based this recipe on the Stroopwafel Cinnamon Cake, I posted a little while back.

Schuddebuikjes Cake

- 200 gr butter on room temperature
- 200 gr self rising flour
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- pinch of koek and speculaas spices (use all-spice instead)
- 100 gr schuddebuikjes
- 150 gr sugar
- 50 gr brown castor sugar
- 4 eggs

Pre heat the oven to 160 degrees. Mix the soft butter with the sugars. When light and creamy, add in the eggs one by one. Make sure one is totally mixed through before adding the next. Add the self rising flour bit by bit. And mix until you have a nice cake batter. Lastly add the schuddebuikjes together with cinnamon, and koek and spaculaas spices. Stir through. Place the cake in the oven for 60-70 minutes. The cake is done when a toothpick comes out clean.

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Typical Dutch: Pepernoten Trifle

I don't make desserts often. This is not because I don't like them, but because it is too much work to prepare them after the main course for me. I simply don't have the energy. But ever since we are cooking for mostly 2 days, sometimes on the 2nd day, when we only have to warm our meal from the previous day, we make dessert. Nick got 2 huge bags of pepernoten from work, but we didn't have that much. So we still have plenty left. They are very seasonal here, because of the Sinterklaas celebration, but they keep long. I am going to use them in baking recipes and I used them for this dessert. If they are out of season, you can use speculaas biscuits. Gingerbread biscuits will work too. It is based on the English trifle but with typical Dutch ingredients. The original recipe is from Femme Magazine.

Pepernoten trifle: (serves 2)
- 90 gr pepernoten
- 1 box of klop klop (a light whipped cream)
- 125 ml whipped cream
- 50 gr dark chocolate
- 80 ml milk

Heat the whipped cream in a pan until boiling point. Remove from heat and stir in the pieces of chocolate. Keep stirring until the chocolate melted and is mixed well with the cream. Place in the fridge for 2.5 hours.

Crumble the pepernoten. You can do this in a plastic bag and a rolling pin, but we just used the food processor. Mix milk and klop klop and keep going until beaten stiff.

Get two glasses and start with the layers. Starts with the crumbled pepernoten, then 2 tbsp of klop klop mixture, then 2 tbsp of chocolate ganache. repeat this once more. Place another tbsp of klop klop on top and top with some whole pepernoten to finish.

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Recipe: Mashpot "Heerlijk Avondje"

Today it is Sinterklaas here in the Netherlands and on 24-Kitchen there was a most delicious looking mashpot with the title "Heerlijk Avondje". This is the name that we also give to the eve of Sinterklaas. So I had to try that of course, because I love trying new kind of mashpots. The original recipe was with Brussel sprouts, but I substituted endive, because I really don't like sprouts much. So below is my version of this recipe. I also cut the ingredients in half because we are with only 2, and mashpot doesn't re-heat that well.

Mashpot "Heerlijk Avondje": (serves 2)
- 500 gr potatoes
- 300 gr endive
- 50 ml milk
- 1 tbsp apple syrup
- 35 gr shaved almonds
- 1 Elstar apple
- bit of butter
- 35 gr dried cranberries
- 1 tsp speculaaskruiden
- 0.5 tbsp brown sugar
- 20 ml apple juice
- salt and pepper

Bring water to a boil. Peel and cut the potatoes in even chunks. Cook the potatoes until done, about 15 minutes. Meanwhile cut the endive. Drain the potatoes and steam them dry in the pan. Mash potatoes and endive together. Heat the milk for a short while in the microwave and add this to the mash together with the apple syrup. Put the almonds in a hot pan without oil and butter to give them some color. Stir those through as well. Add salt and pepper to taste.

For the apple mixture:
Peel and cut the apple. Heat a bit of butter in a pan and bake apple and cranberries with the speculaas spices for about 4 minutes. Add sugar and apple juice and let it simmer for 4 more minutes.
Scoop the mixture over the mashpot before serving.

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Recipe: Speculaas Brownies

It is almost Sinterklaas, the Dutch holiday for children that kind of resembles Santaclaus. Around this time us Dutchies start to eat all kind of season things like kruidnoten and speculaas. Two typical Dutch things. I already made a cheesecake with this Dutch spice blend and last Sunday I made speculaas brownies according to a recipe from Rozemarijn Koken & Foto. This. Were. The. Best. Brownies. I. Ever. Made. Let me tell you that! My boyfriend who isn't all that crazy about chocolate baked goods, just LOVED these. So Dutchies, please just click the link above. Non-Dutchies, here is a translation below.

Speculaas Brownies (makes about 15-16, depending if you cut 4x4 or 3x5)

- 200 gr butter (the rich kind), in cubes
- 120 gr dark chocolate, in pieces
- 3 eggs
- 200 gr sugar
- 100 gr flour
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- pinch of salt
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 25 gr cocoa
- 100 gr speculaas biscuts

Pre heat the oven to 180 degrees.

Melt the chocolate and butter au bain marie by putting them in a bowl and place this on top of a pan with a layer of water in it. Fire on low, keep stirring and never leave it from sight ;) Let it cool a bit.

Beat the eggs nad sugar. Add flour, vanilla, salt, cinnamon and cocoa. Stir through and then add the chocolate mixture. Make a smooth matter of it. Then break the speculaas in little pieces and stir through the batter.

Line a square or rectangular oven dish with a baking sheet, so the brownies will go out easy. Bake for about 30 minutes (unless you have our dysfunctional oven, then it takes about twice as long). The brownies don't need the toothpick test, they still need to be chewy inside, but the top needs to be set. Let it cool a bit before cutting them.

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Recipe: Speculaas Cheesecake

Cooking is something that has become a bit of a hassle these days. My energy is failing me once again, and while my BF doesn't mind to cook, he doesn't like to try new things all the time. Next to that when we do try new things, not everything is blog worthy, and things that are, I often forget to blog :( Being chronically ill is just a royal pain in the butt atm.

So far the excuses. Let's move on to the more fun things ;) In this time of year a lot of people in the Netherlands make things with speculaas, a Dutch spicemix for biscuits. I also wanted to make something because it really is a nice spice combination that has a warm and comforting flavour. Nick and I both liked a recipe for speculaas cheesecake that we found on Lekker en Simpel. This was the first baked cheesecake I ever made, and it tastes really good! For Dutch people just click the link to the recipe, I will translate below.

Speculaas Cheesecake (serves 8)
- 2 eggs
- 400 gr Mon chou (or other cream cheese)
- 200 gr biscuits of choice, I used bastogne
- 6 tbsp melted butter (about 90 gram)
- 100 gr sugar
- a bit of vanilla essence (I used 1 tsp)
- 2 tsp koek and speculaas spices (I used about 3 tsp)

Pre heat the oven on 180 degrees.
Crumble the cookies. I used a kitchen aid for that part. Mix it up with the melted butter. Then grease spring form with some butter. (I used a rather small one, for a higher cake). Press the crumble mixture on the bottom until it forms a solid base. I pressed it a bit up on the sides.

Mix in a large bowl, mon chou with sugar, vanilla and speculaas spice mix. Add the eggs and mix some more until you have a smooth batter. Add this to the spring form and bake you cheesecake in the oven until the cheese is settled. In my oven this took like 70 minutes, but the original recipe says 40.

Let it cool down, and place it in the fridge after. The cheesecake is served cold, and tastes even better the next day.

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Recipe: Pepernotencake

Today in the Netherlands we celebrate Sinterklaas. And those festivities come with their own traditional treats. One of them being pepernoten or in this case technically kruidnoten. These are a kind of gingerbread mini cookies. All though I don't really celebrate Sinterklaas this year, I did so some baking and today I want to share that recipe with you.

I pinned that recipe on Pinterest, so this is also my first pin for another round of the Pin It and Do It challenge from Trish at Love, Laughter and a Touch of Insanity. You can find the Dutch recipe and original pin here.

Now for all my non Dutch readers, this recipe might be hard to make because of lack of pepernoten. But I am sure you will be able to find something that tastes similar. I just wanted to share a piece of Dutch tradition today.

Pepernotencake
- 250gr cake mix
- 200gr white castor sugar
- 200gr butter
- 3 free range or organic eggs (m)
- 75gr shaved almond
- 100gr kruidnootjes (gingerbread cookies)
- 1 tbsp Dutch "koek en speculaas" mix (a mix of cinnamon, coriander, nutmeg, clove, ginger, cardamom and orange peel)

Use butter to grease a cake tin. Mix the butter and the sugar together. Add the eggs one by one. Only add the next egg when the previous egg is well mixed in the batter. Then add the cakemix and the "koek en speculaas mix" and mix until you get a sticky batter. Add the "kruidnootjes" to the batter. Scoop the batter into the cake tin and sprinkle the almond on top. Bake the cake for about 60-70 minutes on 160 degrees. But it is different for each oven. Mine took 80 minutes. I baked the last 20 minutes with silver foil on top to prevent the cake from getting too dark. The cake is done when a wooden pick comes out clean.

Some process pictures:

 Before the cake went into the oven. The batter is sticky and a bit of a mess. That's okay.

 After it was baked.

I hope that everyone who celebrates Sinterklaas tonight, will have a great time! This is a great recipe btw to use up your leftover "kruidnoten" even when they are stale, because they will soften in the oven anyway.

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