One day in early December, our five-year-old came
home from school all excited about a strange thing that had happened.
She said there were muddy marks all over the
classroom and even on the carpet. The teacher said that it must have been the
doing of the naughty zwarte piets or the ‘black peters’ who are the
helpers of Sinterklass – the Dutch version of Santa Claus.
The piets had scattered little
nut-shaped cookies all over the school.
The teacher had told the class that the cookies
were called pepernoten and she even taught them a song about it:
O
pepernoot, O pepernoot, lekker lekker lekker lekker pepernoot
En
schuimpjes en schuimpjes
Lekker
lekker lekker lekker pepernoot
It is an
action song that tells how tasty the cookies and the sweeties are.
Juf Ceciel,
the Dutch teacher with whom I worked, shared her simple pepernoten recipe
with me. In Dutch. It was a challenge.
That’s how I
learnt elementary Dutch language and also to make some traditional Dutch dishes.
Baking pepernoten
is a favourite activity for children on Christmas play dates. Served with hot
chocolate, pepernoten are the perfect tea-time snacks.
The
translated recipe is as follows:
Ingredients:
100 gm
self-raising flour
50 gm dark
brown sugar
25 gm butter,
cut in cubes
2
tablespoons milk
2 teaspoons speculaas
(This is a spice mixture made with nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves)
Method:
Mix the
flour and the sugar in a bowl.
Add the
butter cubes.
Add milk and
speculaas.
Knead for
two minutes.
Preheat the
oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
Grease a
baking tray.
Make tiny
balls of the mixture and place them on the tray.
Bake for
15-20 minutes.
If children
are making the pepernoten, you just have to help them with the measuring
and the baking. Let them sing Christmas carols while they make them.
These will
be treasured memories.
To find out more
about Sinterklass and his arrival in Muscat, you may go to http://freshmintandlemon.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-good-holy-man-comes-to-town.html
