December has started and Linköping looks super nice with all the snow, so me and my friends all got in a Christmas mood! We decided to do a Secret Santa with presents and food, so everyone got one person assigned where they needed to buy presents for. We were with 35 people so at the party we got a huge bag of presents, which looked really nice.

Since my friends (we all study the same masters) come from a lot of different countries, we decided to also make some food per country! So everyone brought a typical dish from their country which is common during Christmas. Me and three friends come from the Netherlands, but as many of you probably know, the Netherlands hasn’t the most amazing food culture. However, we have something called “Sinterklaas”, it’s hard to translate into English but it’s a little bit before Christmas and it’s a really old tradition. During this Sinterklaas event, we eat a lot of “pepernoten”. Again, this is also impossible to translate but it’s kind of similar to gingerbread cookies, except that pepernoten are very small. I’ll tell you the recipe at the bottom of this blog so you can try to make them yourselves! It’s super easy to make and you don’t need a lot of ingredients.

The food cooked by the others was amazing. It’s really nice to be with international people and learn more about their culture, and for me food is the way to go to get to know someone’s culture! We had dishes from Portugal, Sweden, Spain, Macau, and so on so it was a big success. When I look back at the pictures, I get excited again and I would love to try all the food once more :).

As promised, I’ll give you the recipe for the “pepernoten” now. Let me know if you made them and if you liked it or if it wasn’t your thing! First, you need to get the ingredients:

  • 250 grams of flower
  • 2 teaspoons of baking powder
  • 125 grams of sugar
  • 1,5 spoons of “speculaaskruiden” (see the recipe below)
  • 125 grams of butter (room temperature)
  • ¼ teaspoon of salt
  • 2-3 spoons of milk (we used oat milk to make them vegan)

For the “speculaaskruiden” you need to combine some spices, in the Netherlands you can buy this in the supermarket but unfortunately not (yet) in Sweden:

  • 5 teaspoons of cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon of nutmeg
  • 1 teaspoon of clove
  • ½ teaspoon of ginger powder
  • ½ teaspoon of cardamom
  • A little bit of pepper

When you made the “speculaaskruiden” and you have all the other ingredients, you can start making the cookies!

  1. Preheat the oven on 175 degrees and put baking paper on the baking tray
  2. Add all ingredients in a bowl and knead the ingredients until it’s a dough
  3. Take some dough and roll it between your hands, then put the little ball on the baking tray and make it a little bit more flat
  4. Place the baking tray in the middle of the oven and bake them for approximately 20 minutes
  5. Take the “pepernoten” off the baking tray and let them cool down for a while, they’ll get crispy in these minutes

And then it’s already done, and you can enjoy some really nice Dutch cookies!

I hope this blog post inspired you to get together with your friends here in Linköping and to organize something fun for Christmas! It’s always a good idea to eat together, especially when you have a lot of international friends. Enjoy the snow and have a great week! Hej då // Milou

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