Applebeignets, 14 days until Christmas

 

I love to eat these. It is something we eat only on new years eve and comes with its own tradition. Calling my grandmother for the recipe, even though we know it by heart and isn’t at all that hard to remember.

There are many different recipes for Apple beignets, but this one is the one I use and also suitable for vegans. As there is no use for milk, eggs or any other animal relatable foods.
It is not a recipe with exact measurement, it is one by feel.

Ingredients:
1 bottle of beer
Flour
A pinch of salt
2-4 Apple
Lemon juice
Cinnamon
Dark brown sugar.
Oil to fry them in
Icing sugar to sprinkle on top.

How to:
1. Peel the apples and cut them into slices. Squeeze a bit of lemon juice over them to keep them from turning brown. Make sure it won’t swim in the juice. If it is too wet you will make it hard on yourself.
2. Pore the bottle of beer into a bowl and at the flour until a thick, gloopy texture is created and of course at the pinch of salt as well. To test the mixture, try one slice of apple and see if the mixture sticks to it. If the mixture isn’t thick enough, it will not stick properly to the apple and the oil will go inside too much and causes the end result to be too greasy and crunchy. The mixture you can see in the video is too thin and didn’t work the way it should.
3. At the sugar and the cinnamon  to the apples. Make sure to cover them completely.
4. Fill a deep pan with the oil and let it heat until 180◦C or until a small piece of bread would be attacked by bubbles immediately (turn brown in 15 seconds). It’s important the oil is hot enough.
5. Put a couple of apple slices into the mixture and make sure, both sides are covered completely. Then carefully put them into the hot oil and wait for them to turn golden brown. In order to get both side fried, turn them with a fork.
Then when they have turned golden brown, remove the from the oil and put them on some paper towel to let the excess oil to leak.
6. Serve them on a plate and sprinkle them with icing sugar.

Kruidnoten a Dutch treat, 22 days until Christmas

It’s something that gets eaten at this time every year, it’s one of the many things to look forward to when Sinterklaas is in the country. Normally we buy them from the store, but this year I decided I wanted to make a few myself.

The last time I’ve made Kruitnoten I was still in school, around the age of 10. We would be busy rolling small balls out of the dough and when we were done it was playtime, time to play in the schoolyards, while the teachers would bake all of the kruitnoten into the oven. When playtime was over we would be welcomed by the smell of freshly baked kruitnoten, which had filled the school. It was that smell that filled my house now and reminded me of me being 10 years old and coming home, at 15.30, with a small bag of delicious home made kruidnoten.

Ingredients:
4 tsp gingerbread spices:             - 8 tsp cinnamon
                                                               - 2 tsp nutmeg
                                                               - 2 tsp clove
                                                               - 1 tsp ginger powder
                                                               - 1 tsp cardamom
                                                               - 1 tsp white pepper

250 g of self-raising flour
125 g of dark brown sugar
100 g hard, cold butter
6 tbsp milk
Pinch of salt

How to:
Preheat the oven to 175 ◦C
Mix the flour with the sugar, gingerbread spices and the salt.
Cut the butter into small pieces and at this together with the milk to the dry ingredients.
Knead quickly into a dough.
Line the baking tray with baking sheet.
Roll the dough into small balls, in the size of a marble, and divide them on the baking tray.
Let the kruidnoten bake for 15 to 20 minutes.