Name: Pepernoten
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 15 min
Total time: 75 min
Yield: 60 pepernoten
Cuisine: Dutch
Ingredients: 250 g plain flour; 1½ tsp baking powder; 2 tsp ground cinnamon; ½ tsp ground cloves; ½ tsp nutmeg, freshly grated or ground; ½ tsp ground ginger; ¼ tsp ground cardamom; 1 pinch salt; 60 g cold butter, cubed; 100 g dark brown soft sugar (basterdsuiker); 1 tbsp apple syrup or sugar beet syrup (stroop); 80 ml full-fat milk

A cookie for Sinterklaas: small, soft pepernoten with the warm taste of cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg. You mix the spices yourself from jars you already have, so there is no packet of spice mix or ready-made mixture involved. The dough is firm and not sticky, so children can knead it and roll little balls from it. A fun afternoon of baking before 5 December, and in a tightly closed tin the cookies stay soft for days.

Method

Oven and tray

Preheat the oven to 180 °C (160 °C fan) and line a baking tray with baking paper. An adult does this.

Mix the dry ingredients

Let the children weigh the flour, baking powder, salt and all the spices into a large bowl and mix well with a spoon until the spices are everywhere and the flour is an even brown.

Add butter and sugar

Add the butter cubes and the brown sugar. With clean fingertips, rub the butter into the flour until you have crumbly sand.

Knead the dough

Add the syrup and the milk and knead everything into a cohesive, firm dough that no longer sticks to your hands. If it still sticks, knead in 1 tablespoon of flour. Cover the dough and let it rest for 30 minutes.

Roll the balls

Roll the dough into small balls the size of a hazelnut. Let the children do this freely: irregular balls give real pepernoten character. Place them on the tray with 2 cm between them.

Bake

Bake the pepernoten for 12 to 15 minutes in the middle of the oven, until they are just firm at the edge. They firm up further as they cool. An adult takes the tray out of the oven.

Cool and store

Let the pepernoten cool on the tray for 10 minutes, then move them to a rack. Once completely cold, store them in a closed tin.

Tips & notes

Baking with children: let the children weigh and mix the dry ingredients, knead the dough and roll the balls. Only putting the tray in and taking it out of the oven is a job for an adult. Wash hands before and after kneading. The dough contains no raw egg, but do not eat it raw: raw flour can carry bacteria and is only safe once baked. The pepernoten are soft on the first day and firm up after a few days. Store them in a closed tin for up to 2 weeks. Home-mixed spices: if you have no ground cloves, grind 4 whole cloves finely.

Chef's tip

Do not roll the balls bigger than a hazelnut: pepernoten rise and become about twice as big. Bake them briefly, until they just feel firm at the edge, because they harden as they cool. If they have become too hard, put a slice of bread in the tin: within a day they soften again.

Variations

With honey: replace the syrup with runny honey for a milder sweetness.
With chocolate: dip the cooled pepernoten halfway into melted dark chocolate.
Even more flavour: let the dough rest in the fridge overnight.

Contains: Gluten Milk