The easy recipe you’ve been waiting for! 🙂 Traditional dutch pepernoten cookies. Also known as spicy cookies, pepper nuts or gingerbread cookies. In the Netherlands there is a never ending debate about wether or not these should be called pepernoten or kruidnoten. The official term is kruidnoten and most Dutch people would know this, but the most used term for describing these delicious cookies is pepernoten. So I’m gonna stick with that for the purpose of this recipe.
This recipe makes the one and only ‘pepernoten’ for me. When I was a toddler, the teacher gave me a sheet of paper with the recipe to take home when we made pepernoten at school. After that day, we made the recipe many times at home, adapting it to our tastes. It’s the ultimate childhood memory for me.
I remember that my sister and I were allowed to help my mother make the dough. Then we would sit at the table with our own ball of dough and a plate on which we could put all our pepernoten. When my mother wasn’t looking, we would sneak little pieces of dough into our mouths, assuming our mother didn’t notice. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.
The dough for these kruidnoten does not need to rest in the fridge. However, it can still be a good idea, because the flavor of the spices will intensify even more.
First a little bit of history. Pepernoten (literall translation is pepper nuts) originate all the way back to the year 1700. To be more precise; pepernoten are from the 16th century, but kruidnoten came around a little later. At the time a lot of spices came out of the East Indies and for the sake of convenience all those spices got the name ‘peper’ (pepper) In reality the spices were nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon, cloves and white pepper, which later became the famous ‘speculaas’ spice mix. And this is the same mix that is used for making Dutch pepernoten
So why add ‘nut’ at the end of the word? Well at the same time the spices were imported the Dutch also imported lots of nuts. And because the shape of the little cookies kind of looked like half of a nut the name soon became ‘pepernoot’.
To add even more confusion; there are pepernoten and kruidnoten. Those are not the same! I will share a recipe for Old Dutch pepernoten later on. But it’s good to know that while they are not the same, the names have gotten mingled over time and most Dutch actually refer to kruidnootjes as pepernoten. Are you still following?
But regardless of the history, these crunchy cookies are a staple during Saint Nicholas (Sinterklaas) festivities. Saint Nicholas is not the same as Santa claus (even though they do kind of look the same and both have a long white beard) and ‘de sint’ is the patron saint of childen. His birthday is celebrated on December 5th or 6th and every Sinterklaas evening small presents are exchanged and loads of pepernoten are consumed! It’s a typical treat to serve on St. Nicholas day.
St. Nicholas goes around on a white horse and arrives in the Netherlands by boat. Just another difference between ‘Sint’ and Santa.
Making pepernoten is very easy to do. They are small crispy cookies and are shaped into small half ball sizes. The recipe contains really only a few ingredients; all purpose flour, self-rising flour, speculaas spice mix, brown sugar, salt butter and milk.
The flavor is somewhat similar to gingerbread although classic gingerbread usually contains anise seed and pepernoten do not.
You add all the dry ingredients to a large bowl, add the wet ingredients and mix it into a firm pliable dough. Roll into little balls and place each small ball on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper. Press each ball gently into the shape of a half sphere.
The fun part is that you can do lots of different things with the pepernoten and give them all sorts of different flavors, dip them into melted chocolate or add additional spices. A Dutch speculaas spice mix is not exactly the same as a pumpkin spice mix or gingerbread spices, but you can definitely use that for making these pepernoten. But it’s also very easy to make your own speculaas spice mix with my recipe.
If you make balls of dough the size of a large marble, 25 minutes should be long enough. This is how I have described it in the recipe below. But if you make the balls bigger or smaller, the baking time will vary by a few minutes. In any case, try to make them all the same size.
In a sealed container you can keep your pepernoten for at least 2-3 weeks. In the freezer up to 3 months, but you can also freeze the dough. Have some leftovers? Why not add them to a dessert as well. They can be used just like any other kind of delicious cookie. I love adding them to my granola.
This should not happen, but you can add a little milk or make it easier to make the small balls by using wet hands.
Of course you can. Just replace the butter with a plant-based margarine and the milk with a vegetable variety.
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