How-to make your own Speculaaskruiden | For us Dutchies living abroad

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Typical Dutch food, sometimes you just miss it when living abroad

It’s not too often that I miss Dutch food, but more the availability of some products whenever I have the cravings. For example, in Holland you buy “Hagelslag” in big cartons to sprinkle on your sandwich. I took that for granted all my life, almost never eating that on my bread honestly, until I moved abroad and suddenly craved for it. And then preferably with the typical Dutch slice of fresh bread lol, and the pure chocolate ones… You see, I’m not easy to please haha. Anyways, after a while Lidl sold these things (vlokken as well) as a cake / cookie topping so I was just looking in the wrong area. Apparently they sell it in most supermarkets, but in small cartons which contain small plastic bags with the “topping” instead of having a full carton that you can use on your sandwich daily. The ones they sell here won’t last long, but at least they have it, right?

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Speculaas, pepernoten and taai taai

Another thing I miss is at the end of every year: speculaas, pepernoten and taai taai. In Holland, you will see speculaas, pepernoten and taai taai appear around September nowadays as it's something people buy because Sinterklaas (Dec 5th) is around the corner. Although you can buy speculaas cookies here in the lidl and aldi supermarket, it’s still not the same as the variations you can buy in Holland. There you will find spice mixes to bake your own speculaas or cakes that match the season, which I won’t find here. Then I realized, that a lot of things can be baked fresh and by myself. It will not only be cheaper to make them myself, and I'm quite sure baking cookies will be a nice way to spend the rainy winter afternoons with my daughter. Before we can start baking anything, let's start the baking journey by making our own mix of speculaaskruiden.

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A lot of different varieties are available, I picked one recipe to start with

Like with every recipe, there are a ton of variations available, and it may be a bit hard to decide which mix is best for you. Therefore I tried picking a quite simple one, from which I can add or leave out things in the future when I have the feeling something is missing or there may be too much in the mix of one herb. Here you see the herbs that go into the mix I made:

Ingredients:

You can choose how much herb mix you prepare at once. I used a measuring spoon of 5 grams for each part. But you can make as much as you want or add / leave out things you like or don't like.

• 10 parts cinnamon
• 2 parts nutmeg
• 2 parts cloves
• 2 parts anise
• 1 part ginger
• 1 part coriander
• 1 part cardamom

It's important that every ingredient is added as a powder, this will prevent your mix from having too much flavour of one herb in some bites. I think that especially the cloves are important to have in very fine powder to avoid having "clove cookies lol".

Measure the herbs one by one, and put them in one jar:

Time to mix them up:

And this is the end result:

Make sure you close the jar without any air being able to get in the mix. I have read that you can prepare it several weeks in advance, but I haven't tested how long you can actually save them. I assume if you close the jar well, the herb mix should be good for a decent while.

Now it's time to start baking speculaas, pepernoten and related cookies.. Enjoy!

~Anouk