Tweet03-12-2010 om 23:21 by Sueli Brodin

The first thing my daughter said when I offered her to bake some pepernoten was: “Do you mean pepernoten or kruidnoten?”

Pepernoten (lit. pepper nuts) and kruidnoten (lit. spice nuts) are two different specialties linked to the tradition of Sinterklaas but for some reason most Dutch people tend to mistakenly call them both pepernoten. So do I. But my daughter obviously knows better!



“Why don’t we bake both?” I told her and searched for the appropriate recipes on the internet.



Pepernoten are made from flour, sugar, anise, cinnamon, and clove and look like small light brown dice whereas kruidnoten are tiny rounded cookies spiced with ginger, cinnamon, white pepper, cardamom, cloves and nutmeg.



Baking Sinterklaas cookies is a very pleasant activity on a cold and snowy winter afternoon in the Netherlands...



... and fills the home with the fragrance of spices from the Far East introduced in the Netherlands by Dutch traders in the 17th and 18th century.



Somehow our first batch of pepernoten ended up looking more like kruidnoten..



While my daughters were busy with the second batch of pepernoten, I remembered that I still had a bag of almond meal stored in the kitchen cupboard and decided to make homemade marzipan. It’s very simple to make since it only takes almond meal, the same quantity of powdered sugar and an egg white.



Eating pepernoten as part of the Sinterklaas celebration is a very old tradition as depicted in this 17th century painting by Jan Steen called “The Feast of Saint Nicholas”, in which a little girl receives a doll and a bucket full of cookies and candies while a boy cries because he only found a roe (rod) in his shoe.
I’m not sure what the word peper in pepernoot refers to: did pepernoten originally contain pepper? Or is the word peper simply used as a generic name for spices?



The tradition of Sinterklaas involves the strewing (strooien) of kruidnoten, pepernoten and other candies around the room on Sinterklaas Eve. I read that the act of strewing is possibly related to ancient Germanic fertility rites practised here, as it can be compared to the image of a farmer sowing his seeds. In this context, children can be seen as the ultimate symbol of fertility.



My husband tells me that when he was a child, his father used to fill his pockets with Sinterklaas cookies and candies (strooigoed) and scatter them so fast that no one saw how he did it and it looked as if the pepernoten were magically flying in from all corners of the living room.



I read in the news this week that the Sinterklaas celebration is becoming increasingly popular in the Netherlands and that the Dutch are expected to eat more than 3,5 billion kruidnoten this year! New varieties of kruidnoten, such as yoghurt or chocolate covered kruidnoten have also conquered the market and have further contributed to the growing consumption of the tasty little cookies.



In the end, my children let their fantasy take the lead and most of their pepernoten and kruidnoten came out in different shapes and sizes...



... and somehow almost tasted the same. It wasn’t really possible to tell one from the other, but my children didn’t mind and enjoyed having some for dessert that evening.



And nothing could beat fresh homemade marzipan!

Leave a reply