Dark Rye And Honey Cake

Cooking With Christie: Cinnamon Waffles

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Inspiration: Flipping through a new-ish cookbook, I spotted the words Krumkaka iron — a device I actually own. (Krumkaka is a Norweigan waffle cookie that, while hot, you shape into a cone.) Reading the rest of the recipe, I discovered it was a straightforward dough to make. Even better, you make the dough one day and on the next, you bake them.

So I whipped them up…and they turned out pretty well.

It took a minute to figure out how long to press the dough between the etched plates of the krumkaka iron. I also needed to slightly increase how much dough I used in each waffle, as the krumkaka plates are larger than the zimtwaffeleisen iron (which, from the pic in the book, looks akin to a very thin shortbread pan).

And they were a fan fave in my husband’s office from those who love cinnamon!

Christie: If I actually had the proper baking iron or became more skilled with the krumkaka iron, I think a certain Belgian detective would happily partake of this extremely crunch and flavorful cookie!

From the Office of Me to You: My one critique of this cookbook is this — this requires a number of very specialized tools to make all the recipes inside successfully. As the author doesn’t give alternative ways to make these bake work if you don’t a horde of vintage or new irons, molds, or waffle plates.

Cooking With Christie: A New To Me Holiday Spice Cookie

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This Week’s Bake: Kruidnoten

Inspiration: I ran across a cookbook I couldn’t resist — Dark Rye And Honey Cake: Festival Baking from Belgium, the Heart of the Low Countries. Not only does it contain instructions for fourteen distinct waffles, five different pretzels, and three separate pancakes….

It contains this little gem of a recipe for kruidnoten.

A spiced cookie popular during Saint Nicholas festivities in Belgium and the Netherlands — it also goes year-round, in my opinion, with coffee time. 

Interestingly these tiny cookies contain no eggs. They also require quite a bit of kneading to bring them together, and once that step’s finished, the dough needs to rest in the fridge overnight. A feature that makes them perfect in my eyes, as I love making a dough one day and baking on the next!

They also require a couple of spices which one may or may not have on hand — including cinnamon, cloves, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, cardamom, coriander, mace, and long pepper. According to the recipe, the long pepper can be substituted with any peppercorn you’ve got on hand — but the mace proved a tad challenging to find (I ended up ordering it off the interwebs).

But these suckers were worth the effort! Spectacularly crunchy, without the threat of breaking a tooth, they go really well with coffee. And since each of mine only weighed about 8 oz (which was a tad big according to the recipe), dipping one in my morning brew didn’t fill me with guilt!

Christie: I cannot wait to make these during the holidays! Most especially since I finally made something I am certain Poirot would enjoy!

BTW: Dark Rye And Honey Cake: Festival Baking from Belgium, the Heart of the Low Countries, is a gorgeous cookbook. And it does more than just list recipes. Our author Regula Ysewijn gives us the history of the bakes, why and when they are important, great instructions (in cups and grams), and awesome pictures!