More on (filled) speculaas and pepernoten

First, Monique, over at The Happy Veganarian, posted her (slightly more healthy) recipe for vegan speculaas cookies and she used a real speculaas cookies mold. I think they look gorgeous, and next year I am going to get my mother's speculaas mold and try using one of those (although my mom has a really big one, and if the little molds are already a pain...). Monique also explains the difference between gingerbread spice and speculaas spice: speculaas spice are the same as gingerbread spice, only without the ginger...

Secondly, as promised, an inside shot of filled (gevulde) speculaas!

(So Mihl, as you can see, it looks a bit different than marzipan. I'm not sure if it will work out if you use marzipan (although I do think the taste will be okay, it just isn't the same as filled speculaas with 'amandelspijs'/almond paste). I think I'd try to grind some almonds, mix it with sugar (half-half) and some soy milk. Also, Dr. Oetker sells almond paste here, maybe they sell it in Germany as well?)

And one of my other favorite Sinterklaas treats: kruidnoten! (You can't really see it, but they are tiny, round balls. A little bit bigger than marbles.)


I think of all the times I made kruidnoten (and I make them every year at least twice for as long as I can remember), I let them burn (just a little bit) 9 out of 10 times. They are tiny, so they burn easily, and I always think they look too pale when the timer goes off. I leave them in the oven for another minute (or two) and... they come out burnt.

This year, the first batch wasn't burnt, but they were too chewy on the inside. I left the second batch in the oven two minutes longer than the first batch, and they were really dark on the bottom, but perfectly crunchy on the inside (my brother and dad preferred the chewy ones though, my mom and me liked the crunchy ones best...). I guess I have to roll the balls a little bit smaller next time, and flatten them a little bit more; maybe then they will be crunchy on the inside, but without burnt bottoms (and then do a batch like the first one for my dad and brother).

This is the recipe I've been using ever since I was a little kid (I think we got it from some sort of newsletter, but I have no idea which one, so I can't give any credit... But it's really basic and all the kruidnoten recipes out there all look very much alike...)

Vegan kruidnoten

250 gr self-raising flour (or 250 gr flour with 1 t baking powder)
100 gr brown sugar (again, Dutch brown sugar is caramelized white sugar)
75 gr margarine,
3 t speculaas spice (but next year, I'm going to add more)
4 T soy milk

Preheat the oven to 200 C/400 F. Mix the flour, sugar and spices. Cut in the margarine and add as much soy milk as needed to make the dough come together. Roll little balls and bake them for 15 minutes.