Tonight there'll be a knock on the door of many Dutch houses. Thousands of kids will run to the door to find a big bag full of presents, left there by Sinterklaas and his Zwarte Pieten.

For most people with little kids, Sinterklaas is an annual tradition, like Santa Claus in the States. I'm the youngest in my family and haven't celebrated Sinterklaas in over ten years. Still I look forward to this national holiday every year. When Sinterklaas comes to the country, he brings loads of food with him. Chocolate letters (I still get a chocolate E every year) and my personal favorite: kruidnoten!
Kruidnoten are basically pieces of speculaas. They are delicious. Literally translated their name would be 'spice nuts', which does not sounds delicous, but they really are!
According to the whole Sinterklaas saga, Zwarte Piet leaves kruidnoten in the shoes and nooks and crannies of the houses of children who have been nice all year. But when you're too old for Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet to come to your house, you'll have to buy them. Or you could bake them yourself!
It's easy. Very easy. Even I can do it, and I caused a black-out while baking cupcakes a year ago. You don't need much. And it's freaking delicious! Bring a little bit of the Dutch Sinterklaas tradition into your home this winter with this recipe!

You'll need:

• 250 grams of self raising flour
• 125 grams of brown sugar
• 100 grams of cream butter
• 50 milliliters of milk
• a pinch of salt
• 1.5 table spoons of speculaas spices

The last ingredient is quite essential for the recipe to work out, but speculaas spices are hard to get your hands on if you're not anywhere near the Dutch border. You can buy them online here or make them yourself with this recipe! Some say you can try using gingerbread spices, but it'll make your kruidnoten taste funny.

You're gonna:

• preheat the oven at 170 degrees Celsius.
• mix de butter until it's not one massive lump anymore. You've gotta mix it with the other ingredients, so make that stuff soft!
• use your hands! Add everything with the butter in a bowl and mix it until it's well mixed. Start out using the mixer (use those swirly things you use for making bread - my dictionary doesn't know the right word, neither does Google). After a while the mixer will have trouble kneading this dough, so continue by hand - which is much more fun anyway :)
• make tiny balls out of this dough. Put these on top of greaseproof paper on a baking try
• squish those balls! They have to be a bit like a dome before you put them in the oven, the shape they are in the pic below (though these have seen the heat of an oven already)
  
• put these things in the oven for 15 minutes, wait five more minutes for them to cool and...
• EAT EAT EAT EAT EAT

Baking is not one of my strongest points, but even I can't go wrong with kruidnoten. It's a beloved tradition to eat these things. I hope you'll like them too.

Stay Awesome!