This year, I made my own gluten free kruidnoten (so called Spice Nuts) (which will be further referred to as pepernoten becauce everybody calls them like that). Actually, it is the first time ever that I made any pepernoten! Honestly, I never even liked the pepernoten from supermarket before my diagnosis unless they were surrounded by a thick layer of chocolate. But Oh! How was I surprised when I tasted our homemade gluten free version of these cookies. Lovely crunchy and smooth at the same time texture guaranteed the melting in my mouth feeling.
Ingredients
- Schar Mix C – 200 g
- Brown sugar – 125 g
- Vanilla extract – 1 spoon
- Baking powder – 1 spoon
- Speculoos spices* (Cook kruiden) – 2 spoons
- Egg – 1
- Butter – 100 g
- Almond milk – 1.5 spoons
*Spices used in speculoos are cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, cardamom and white pepper.
Necessary appliances
- An oven pre-heated to 175ºC
- A baking tray and baking paper
- A bowl – to mix all ingredients
- A fridge (~4ºC) – to cool the dough
- Optional: a board and a knife to cut/shape the pepernoten
Preparation steps
- Place the flour (I used Schar Mix C), sugar, vanilla extract, baking powder, cook kruiden in a bowl and mix together.
- Add one egg and cold butter (cut in small pieces) to the dry ingredients and knead it well with your hands.
- If the ingredients are too dry to form the dough – add the almond milk (in my case one and half spoon of liquid was enough). Knead until the dough is developed.
- Put the dough in a plastic bag and cool it in the fridge for a couple of hours until it is really hard (I left mine in a fridge for 4 hours). Before placing the dough in a fridge – shape it in a way that it is easy to cut in smaller pieces when it is cooled and hard.
- The hard dough is easy to cut in squares of desired size. I didn’t make round pepernoten because I wanted to keep the dough as cold as possible. Forming round shape with my hands would warm up the dough and I really wanted to avoid it.
- Place the cookies on a baking tray (on a baking paper) and bake for about 15 minutes at 175ºC.
- Cool the pepernoten before serving.
Tips
- If you want your pepernoten round, you could try to shape them first and then cool them in a fridge.
- If the dough is shaped in long rolls it is easier to cut it into pieces after cooling (they will be round then as well).
- The Shar Mix C can be replaced by another GF flour (the texture will be different though and I really liked the mouth feel here).
- It is possible to put the cooled pepernoten in a chocolate bath to further spoil your palate.
- Butter can be replaced by plant based fat (margarine) to make 100% glutenfree and dairyfree pepernoten.
- The almond milk can be replaced by dairy milk or other liquid (sweet water)
- It is popular to use buckwheat flour to make GF pepernoten.
- I bought my cook kruiden in EkoPlaza from Het Blauwe Huis (koek kruiden).
Enjoy baking your own gluten free Pepernoten/Kruidnoten,
Kati
