Little People and Sweet Things

During my run tonight, a surprising number of kids was milling about in the dark. There were groups of them, and they weren’t quietly rushing home either. There was giggling, there were games of tag. And then my musings about how kids’ bed times must be changing were interrupted by the little tykes singing. Singing, with paper lanterns dangling from their arms.

And it dawned on me: it is St Maarten today. A day for kids to carry flammable paper lights and demand candy from strangers in the night. As an adult you are supposed to be prepared for being of those strangers and have plenty of sugary treats on hand. I, of course, have no regular dealings with little people, was oblivious to St Maarten up until that point and was woefully unprepared for pushing sweets. So I did the mature thing and snuck past the kids on tiptoe, willing them not to notice me.

It worked, I sprinted up the four flights of stairs to my house and had just closed my front door with a relieved sigh when the bell rang. I wasn’t expecting anyone, and unannounced visits rarely happen to me. I gingerly picked up the intercom receiver and heard tiny voices screeching about cows with tails and girls in skirts. Crap! Oh, how I wished I had some of the goodies up there to share.

But, alas, that gorgeous collection of sweet things was made weeks before by Manon and me to celebrate her 30th birthday. It was good indeed, and there were plenty of left-overs, but they were nothing but a memory now. Which is where my shoe box apartment showed its useful side- being on the top floor, there is no way for small ones to peep inside and mock me for not opening the door. So I quietly put the receiver down, closed the curtains more tightly and thanked Amsterdam’s crazy house prices for making sure I could not buy anything closer to the ground floor.

Honestly, I don’t know how excited the kids would have been about the stuff in the picture. I would definitely grin a very happy grin if offered any of those treats and might have let out a little squeal of delight when I saw them all together. But kids? I am guessing there just aren’t enough snazzy wrappers or brighter-than-life colorings to keep m happy. If, however, you are over the age of ten and are looking for a sweet spot in your day, I urge you to make something you see here. It was all seriously good.

From the simply chic apple tart to the surprising orange brownies and from the luscious cheese cake to the snappy ginger cookies, you can’t really go wrong. If you will allow me a small suggestion, though, I think you should start with the scones. They are easy-easy and surprisingly wonderful. Tender and crumbly, with a faintly sweet crumb, they are a great vehicle for lots of cream and raspberry jam.

All recipes are on this website (in Dutch only).

Ginger snaps

Cranberry cheesecake

Scones

Nutty orange brownies

Apple tart

White chocolate muffins with raspberries

Homey Cookies (oatmeal raisin cookies)

I am a sucker for advertising. Sell me a bottle of water for 15 cents and I think it is reasonable. Slap a nice label on a snazzily designed bottle of the same water and I will happily pay ten times that price and walk away thinking I got a good deal. I suppose it is the same mechanism (albeit in the opposite direction) that gives me sticker fever.

Another branch off that same tree is the warm, fuzzy, back-to-childhood feeling I get about certain foods, even if they’re relative newcomers in my life. It doesn’t matter that turkey never featured on our Christmas dinner table growing up; I have seen so many American tv Christmas dinners, read references to Christmas turkey and heard about big bird Christmas adventures so often they feel like my heritage, too. I want a good old-fashioned trussed turkey for Christmas, even if it is the first time!

The same thing has happened between me and oatmeal-raisin cookies. I don’t remember ever eating one as a kid. I remember fantastic homemade butter cookies with a whole hazelnut on top. I remember fresh apple pie and, boy, do I remember individual sponge cakes with fluorescent pink frosting. But oatmeal-raisin cookies? Nope. Still, I have come to a point where I firmly associate these cookies with home, coziness and long afternoons running through flowery fields. I grew up in a house where the closest field of flowers was… not somewhere I ever got to. No matter, the feeling is there and sometimes I like to milk it for all it is worth.

Which is why I baked oatmeal-raisin cookies when I wanted to make a friend feel welcome this weekend. And to give the cookies that extra-homey touch, I added a good pinch of cinnamon. They were crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside and very cozy indeed. The recipe comes from Cooking With Friends; I halved it, substituted vanilla sugar for the granulated sugar, omitted the vanilla extract and dialed down the amount of salt and raisins. The original can be found here, among other places, my version is below.

Oh, and for the drink pairing to make this my second koek en zopie entry? What else than a glass of cold milk? Another thing I didn’t do in my childhood (we had tea with our cookies), but that seems so right now: milk and cookies.

Oatmeal-raisin cookies

Based on Cooking with Friends

Makes about 15

90 gr butter, softened
80 gr firmly packed light brown sugar
65 gr vanilla sugar (not the synthetic stuff from small packets)
1 small egg
85 gr rolled oats
80 gr plain flour
scant 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
scant 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
pinch of salt
large pinch of cinnamon
handful raisins

Preheat the oven to 190C.

Cream butter and sugars together until light and fluffy. Add egg and beat until well combined.
In a separate bowl, combine oats, flour, soda, baking powder, cinnamon and salt. Mix into butter mixture until just combined. Stir in raisins.

Form the dough into small golf ball-sized orbs and flatten onto a baking sheet covered with a silicone mat. Leave quite a bit of room between the disks to allow for spreading.

Bake for 12-15 minutes until golden brown. Cool on the baking sheet for a few minutes and then continue cooling on a rack.

Golden Cookies for a Blue Day (Lemon Cumin Cookies)

It is the third week of January and the third week of new year’s resolutions. A time, I suspect, when people take a deep breath, pat themselves on the shoulder for saint-style behavior and soldier on with good intentions for a few more weeks before they give into temptation. So when I brought cookies into work today, I was expecting to take most of them straight back home again.

Not so.

Turns out that, when you take ten women, a nine AM meeting and a box of Sarah Raven’s lemon cumin cookies, you are swiftly left with a box of just crumbs. Lemon-scented, chewy-crispy, delicious crumbs. And ten happy women, with more crumbs scattered on their shirts.

I should have seen this coming. I tasted a cookie last night and had to talk to myself sternly not to eat them all. (Okay, I’ll be honest. I had to put them in an airtight container and store them out of sight.) This in spite of the fact that I had just eaten a full meal and had dessert waiting for me. These cookies are addictive.

They also make a great antidote to what the papers are calling “Blue Monday”. Apparently, today is the day when everyone slips into a funk: the weather is vile, the next holiday seems light-years away and our resolutions have taken a nosedive. No wonder we went for the cookies, if the alternative was daylong gloom. We could have fared much worse too, than applying these cookies as a balm to our battered souls. They smell of summer and have a faintly exotic taste to evoke images of holidays in warmer places. Add to that a happy golden color and a satisfying crunch and you have a fine sweet indeed.

So, for those looking for a fantastic cookie or for those wanting a spot of edible escapism: your quest is over. For anyone else: won’t you invite me to your tropical island?

Lemon Cumin Cookies

From Sarah Raven's Garden Cookbook

Makes about 30

300 gr caster sugar

125 gr butter, softened

2 egg yolks

Finely grated zest of 2 lemons, and 4 tbsp of lemon juice

2 tsp ground cumin

300 gr plain flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in the egg yolks, lemon zest and juice and cumin. Sift together the flour and bicarbonate of soda, then fold in the butter mixture to form a soft dough.

Place the dough on a piece of greaseproof paper and roll into a cylinder about 5 cm in diameter, twisting the ends of the paper together and being careful not to wrap any of the greaseproof paper into the dough. Place dough in the freezer for 1,5-2 hours until it is hard.

Preheat the oven to 170C. Line a baking sheet with a piece of greaseproof paper. Unwrap the dough and cut into 5 mm slices. Place these on the bakingsheet, leaving a very generous space between them to allow for spreading.

Bake the biscuits for 8-10 minutes or until just firm to the touch. Slide them onto a wire rack and then leave to cool.