It's almost St Nicholas day!
Have you got your shoe?
If there’s a big Belgian holiday other than Christmas, it has to be St Nicholas day.
It’s a big deal involving crafts, songs and lots of nerves waiting to see if St Nicholas stopped by with gifts and treats.
Here’s an excerpt from my book ‘The Festive Belgian Bakery - Holiday Edition’ all about Sinterklaas.
“St Nicholas is celebrated the evening of December 5th (the Nederlands) and the morning of December 6th (Belgium).
If you’re a child you get to put your shoe by the fire or the door and hope St Nicholas will have left a little present when you wake up the next morning. Leaving a carrot for his horse or a drawing by your shoe or singing a song has been known to help. This is also the way for St Nicholas to get your wish list.
Chocolate figures and speculaas biscuits are a common find by your shoe, they’re often even shaped like St Nicholas!
You can eat them as-is but they’re also populair on bread. A slice of, usually white, bread with a good layer of butter and chunks of broken up chocolate figure or a speculaas biscuit. Those are often also dipped in coffee before being but on that slice of bread. A real treat for after St Nicholas’s visit!”
That’s just a bit from the book of course and yes, both of those are for breakfast! And also yes, that coffee-dipping is for kids too.
That’s actually how Biscoff cookie spread got invented. There was a Shark Tank/Dragon’s Den style show on TV years ago where someone pitched this spread she had made wanting to save time making her children breakfast. She ended up selling her invention to Lotus, the producer of Biscoff, who started producing the spread. Minus the coffee.1
The chocolate figures are obviously key.
You could get one shaped like St Nicholas himself, it’s his birthday after all so why not.
Different animals too, maybe one in the shape of his horse, his favourite way to travel across all the roofs of all the homes he visits.
If you’re like ‘hey, I want to make some of those chocolate figures but what exactly should I buy?’ well, I made you a little shopping list.
my book of course for the instructions.
one or two moulds. I always recommend you get one that makes some 2d-figures as well as a mould for hollow ones. Why? Well, you can read all about that in the book! These and these are cute but there are lots of options. If you want to go more towards the Dutch side of things, these letters are cute too. A full list of St Nicholas approved figures is in the book.
two pots that fit inside one another, again, what a shock, details in my book, or an electric double boiler but they can be a bit finicky to work with if you’re not familiar with yours yet.
a plastic or metal dough scraper.
a spatula and small ladle.
a spoon or butter knife.
chocolate. Callebaut is the iconic Belgian brand for making figures.
You can get all of these in some shape or form from amazon or your local cooking store too. Chocolate moulds may be a bit trickier to find offline but there are quite a few online places in the US and globally too.
What about those speculaas biscuits?
Alright, for one time and one time only, you’re getting a recipe from my book, gasp! I know, right?!
Speculaas
ingredients
65g butter
100g dark cassonade sugar
1/2tsp salt
3/4tsp speculaas spices
165g flour
3/4tsp baking soda
a tiny splash of coffee or milk if needed
instructions
Mix the butter with the salt and sugar until the sugar has dissolved. Sift the flour together with the spices and baking soda. Mix the flour with the butter and press the mixture together until forms a dough that holds together well.
Take a piece of dough and roll it into a sausage shape. Shape the speculaas.
Bake at 180°C.
Longer instructions with more details, including how to work with cookie stamps and speculaas boards or what cassonade sugar is and how to replace it are in the book of course 🙂.
You can find the book pretty much everywhere on amazon and in the US on Bookshop -Dutch version only- and at Barnes and Noble English version and Dutch version.
On Amazon you can find the English version here and Dutch version here. Do look for the book on your local amazon website to get the best price.
What I didn’t remember from the show from 2007 was that apparently there were two contestants with a similar product. One team produced a ‘speculaas’ paste, the other contestant ‘speculoos’ paste. Confusing, yes. More background on the difference in my book but basically speculoos is like a brand name, used by Lotus, and in Belgium not uncommonly used for biscuits that are technically speculaas. The recipe in the book is for speculaas. More on the contest and products https://www.nieuwsblad.be/cnt/kh1ji8n9 https://www.nieuwsblad.be/cnt/gcf35mgi6 https://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20110120_029
Just tried to explain the concept of St Nicholas to my New Zealand friends, they didn't entirely get it 🤣 but we all love some good chocolate of course!
Gorgeous and so christmassy. I love it when friends ask us over for St Nicholas.