Speculaas — and Mystic woman who makes it — are Dutch treats
I’m always intrigued by the power of food, not only its ability to awaken vivid memories and re-establish links to the past, but also the way it can connect us to each other, help us reach new levels of understanding and bring out the things we have in common rather than the things that set us apart.
Anita Steendam of Mystic understands that power, particularly this time of year when she recreates the Dutch cuisine that was a staple of her childhood in Canada, and that today strengthens her connection to The Netherlands, her parents’ homeland.
Steendam, who once shared her recipe for Snert — Dutch pea soup — with The Day’s readers, recently extended an invitation to sample another Dutch delicacy, filled speculaas, a kind of spiced, soft, shortbread cookie-bar. That’s the kind of invitation that should not be turned down.
In her tidy Groton home, with the speculaas in the oven filling the house with holiday smells of cinnamon and spice, she speaks of her mother and father who emigrated to Canada in 1952, having survived childhoods defined by the occupation of their country by Nazi Germany during World War II.
As a young man, her father had been part of the Dutch resistance, making false papers and IDs for Jews trying to assimilate to survive the occupation.
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Her grandmother on her mother’s side, a widow with six children — two others had died in infancy — ran a homeopathic pharmacy, and during the occupation, she hid a Jewish family in her attic. Like Anne Frank, hiding in Amsterdam at that same time, this man, woman and young boy owed their existence to Steendam’s grandmother’s courage.
It was the job of Steendam’s mother, then a young teenager, to ride to local farms on her bicycle and bring home whatever provisions she could gather. German soldiers would stop her frequently, Steendam says, because she had so much food, a telltale sign of providing shelter to Jews. Her mother would tell the police that she had large family — eight children, failing to mention that two had died — plus a cook and a housekeeper. And the soldiers would let her go on her way. If she had been caught, her family’s fate and the fate of their charges surely would have been execution by a public firing squad.
“I didn’t live through the Holocaust,” Steendam says. “My parents did, not as Jews, but they had their own emotional trauma from the war.”
But at Christmas time, she recalls, all their cares seemed to fade.
“Somehow, the family was just happier at Christmas,” Steendam, 59, recalls, and recreating some of those delicious holiday treats brings her “culturally back to the good times.”
In Ottawa, her parents lived in a Dutch community where there was lots of celebrating and lots of holiday treats. Take oliebollen, for instance.
Steendam says we can thank this fried pastry traditionally eaten on New Year’s Eve for our modern-day doughnuts.
“Americans start diets on the first of January. The Dutch, we eat doughnuts,” she laughs. “That’s what you’d see everywhere, and that’s what you’d smell.”
Her father made them every year, a sweet, fried dough with raisins or currants or perhaps a bit of apple. But, she says, her mother would complain, “I don’t want that stink in the house.” So wearing his gloves and a heavy coat and hat, her father would brave the Canadian winter and fry oliebollen in the garage.
Now Steendam bakes the kinds of Dutch cakes, cookies and pastries that used to arrive in time for St. Nicholas Day in a box sent by relatives back home: banketstaaf, pepernootjes (or pepernoten), a chocolate A for Anita, a marzipan pig, and especially speculaas — the soft version, filled with marzipan.
“When I eat it — even when I smell it — it brings me back to the Dutch traditions we had at home,” she recalls.
Steendam cuts the filled speculaas into small squares, the perfect size for this rich, buttery bar. The thin slices of marzipan in the middle mingle with the speculaas dough as it bakes, creating a dense, sugary layer that is reminiscent of sweetened condensed milk, creamy and almost tasting of caramel, but with that added scent of almonds.
I recently followed her recipe to make the crisp version. In my early morning baking session, I must confess, I didn’t have any sliced almonds and I forgot to add the allspice and cloves. No matter. The resulting nut-free cookies were buttery and light, delicious with the cinnamon and ginger alone.
As I listened to Steendam’s stories and tasted her speculaas, I thought of my own father, who served in the 743rd Tank Battalion and was part of the Allied force that pushed across Belgium into The Netherlands in September 1944. A short time later, they crossed into Germany, continuing to push north, fighting until mid-April 1945 when the battalion suffered its last casualties.
It’s easy to forget that we’re all in it together on this small planet. All it takes is a little butter, some cinnamon, and some conversation to bring it all back into focus.
Enjoy!
Jill Blanchette is the multiplatform production editor at The Day. Share comments and recipes with her at j.blanchette@theday.com. Get more recipes and follow her culinary exploits at www.theday.com/spillingthebeans.
Anita Steendam's Speculaas
Makes about 4 dozen soft or crisp speculaas
1½ cup dark brown sugar (you may substitute light brown but you’ll end up with a slightly less flavorful cookie and you may need to add an extra egg)
½ pound salted butter (2 sticks), cut into large chunks
2 eggs, divided (you may need to add an egg if you use light brown sugar)
3 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ginger
¼ teaspoon allspice
Pinch of cloves
3 cups flour
Sliced almonds
For filled speculaas:
Slivered almonds instead of sliced
A small package of marzipan
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
In a large mixing bowl or in the bowl of a stand mixer, mix the dark brown sugar and butter until thoroughly combined. Add 1 egg and mix well.
Put the flour, baking powder and spices into a medium-size bowl and mix thoroughly. Add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture. If using a stand mixture, pulse the mix a few times before leaving it on so that the flour won’t spray out of the bowl.
When the dough begins to clump — you may need to add another egg if you used light brown sugar — dump the dough onto a counter top and bring it together with your hands. This is a buttery dough so don’t work it too much. It will soften and become sticky quickly.
Divide the dough in half. Wrap one half in plastic wrap and put it into the refrigerator as you press the other half into a quarter sheet pan or any baking pan with sides that measure about 9-by-13-inches. If you use a smaller pan, you’ll make a thicker, softer speculaas. If you use a larger pan, your speculaas will be thinner and crispy. When it’s spread evenly, refrigerate the first pan as you work on the second.
Beat the remaining egg and brush it over the surface of the dough in each pan. Spread a thin layer of sliced almonds over the top and gently press them into place. Using a fork, score the dough into rectangles to form the outlines of each cookie. This will help them remain intact when you cut them after they are baked.
Bake the speculaas until the edges of the dough are nicely browned, 15 to 20 minutes. When they come out of the oven, re-score the dough with a sharp knife along the same lines you made with your fork. Let the cookies cool completely before cutting them again and removing them from the pan.
For filled speculaas: Divide the dough in half, refrigerate one half and press the other into a 9-inch square baking dish. Arrange very thin slices of marzipan on top of the first layer. Then break the remaining half of the dough into pieces, distribute them evenly over the top of the marzipan layer, then press the dough evenly into a top layer. Use a fork to score the dough, marking off small squares. Press a slivered almond into the center of each square. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Let cool completely before cutting into squares.
Anita says that, whether soft, filled or crisp, speculaas tastes best when it’s allowed to sit for a day or so before eating.
“I know (it's) very tempting!” she writes. “I find the longer it sits, the better it tastes. A week after baking it is really wonderful!”
Original recipe from Anita Steendam of Mystic.
Editor's note: This version fixes an incorrect reference to an ingredient. The only leavener in this recipe is baking powder.
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