Tasty Spice Nuts

Just one more night and for many many people in the Netherlands it’ll be time to celebrate Saint Nicholas! Some may have even celebrated it already. Sinterklaas or Saint Nicholas Day is a festival for children usually celebrated on either 5th or 6th of December. It celebrates the legend of Saint Nicholas, bringer of gifts. “Santa Claus” is actually derived from the Dutch Sinterklaas. If you’d like to know more about Sinterklaas I suggest you check out Wikipedia, I’m here for the recipes, not for the history lessons

I’m always happy when this time of year comes around, mainly because it means it time for some tasty spice nuts! A typical Dutch cookie only available in shops at the end of the year. Once I start eating them I just can’t stop. Spice Nuts are also very fun and easy to make, you can involve kids if you want as well. I couldn’t let Sinterklaas pass without a recipe for spice nuts!

I’d say, let’s get all the ingredients and start making this homemade spice nuts for Saint Nicholas day!

Grab your essentials, brown sugar, self-rising flour, butter, milk and Dutch Cookie Spice mix. The Dutch Cookies Spice mix, is a typical mix you can find in most of Dutch supermarkets. You can make your own Dutch cookie spice mix by combining 2 tbsp ground cinnamon, 2 tsp ground nutmeg, 2 tsp ground clove, 3/4 tsp ground white pepper, 1 tsp ground aniseed, 1 tsp ground ginger and 1 tsp ground coriander. Store the mix in an air-tight container. Pumpkin Pie spice mix can also be used instead of Dutch cookie spice mix.

 

 

 

 

Prepare a baking tray with baking paper and set aside.

 

 

 

 

 

Add flour to a bowl.

 

 

 

 

 

Make a hole in the middle of the flour.

 

 

 

 

 

Add sugar.

 

 

 

 

Cookie Spice mix.

 

 

 

 

 

Butter.

 

 

 

 

 

Pinch of salt.

 

 

 

 

 

And milk.

 

 

 

 

 

Now, using your fingers, make a crumbly dough. These aren’t my fingers by the way, my mom was my baking helper for the day, so I could take pictures, thanks mom!

 

 

 

 

 

You should make the dough crumbly like this. This is the point where I’d like to ‘taste’ the dough, which sometimes results in less spice nuts in the end, I don’t understand why… .

 

 

 

 

 

Quickly kneed the crumble into a supple dough and form into a ball, or in our case, a long shape which kind of reminds me of something else… So I suggest you make a ball, it’s better on the eyes…

 

 

 

 

 

Now, take a little bit of the dough and form into little balls, the size of a peanut, or, if you’d like a bigger cookie, the size of a hazelnut. Place the balls on your prepared baking tray.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Place the Spice Nuts in the oven and bake till they are done. The Spice Nuts will harden as they cool down.

 

 

 

 

 

And there you have it, extremely tasty Spice Nuts! The Spice Nuts in this picture were gone in about 5 minutes… I didn’t even manage to dip them into chocolate which makes them even more delicious!

2011-12-04