No holiday is complete without stacks of baked goodies, so get to work!
Clockwise from top left are katentongen, varkoren and currant biscuits.
I'll never forger childhood seaside holidays, especially the anticipation and packing beforehand. The car would be serviced and then, the evening before our departure, my dad would stop by the petrol station for a final check: tank full, tyres pumped, window washer tank full. Dad would check the oil and water again, just in case. Then that last sleepless night before we took to the road.
What a thrill it was – that first sight of the sea from the crest of a hill. The hills of Natal tricked us year after year; we could never figure out behind which one the sea was hiding.
Holiday fever would start a few weeks beforehand, when Mom said it was time to bake biscuits: coffee biscuits, neatly squeezed through a coffee mill; ginger biscuits; sugar biscuits; custard biscuits… I was a willing helper – biscuit dough does, after all, taste almost as good as the biscuits themselves!
The timing had to be perfect, because Mom had a tough time stopping us from emptying the biscuit tins before they were packed in the boot.
Delightful memories of afternoons in the kitchen came flooding back to me when I met Femmy van den Hoek two years ago – Dutch by birth but now living in Koringberg – and tasted her delicious Dutch kletskoppen and varkoren. Yes, biscuits with names that only the Dutch could dream up. Yet we South Africans can give them a run for their money: krimpvarkies (hedgehogs) oblietjies (rolled wafers), Jan Smuts biscuits, Hertzoggies…
Put on your apron and start baking; the holidays aren’t far off.
Femmy van den Hoek came to South Africa from The Hague in 1968 with her husband Jan. They spent some time in Table View and Saldanha and ran a few restaurants before settling in Koringberg in 2001. Jan has since passed away. Femmy brought her recipes with her from the Netherlands. Typical Dutch biscuits are rich and delicious, and they have fun names that will amuse children no end: krakelingen, kattetongen, speculaas, boterkoekjes, varkoren, kletskoppen…
Varkoren: play it by ear
You only need to look at their shape to guess that the name means “pig’s ears”. You need:
• 1 roll shop-bought puff pastry
• about ½ cup sugar (or more)
• ground cinnamon (optional) Here’s how: 1. Warm up. Take the puff pastry out of the freezer to thaw, and preheat the oven to 200 ºC. Roll out the pastry to a rectangle of 30 x 20 cm and sprinkle the sugar (mixed with cinnamon, if you prefer) over it. 2. Slice it. Now roll up the pastry from the two longer sides so that you have two rolls meeting in the middle. Cut this double sausage into 5 mm-thick slices. 2. Cool down. Rinse a baking sheet under cold water and arrange the pastry slices on it. Bake the biscuits for 12 minutes. Flip them over and bake for another 5 minutes.
Kattetongen: Miaow!
Femmy bakes fragrant biscuits that remind me of the kattetongen (“cat’s tongues”) my Gran used to bake. Alas, I never got the recipe from Femmy or Gran, but this one from www.wereldexpat.nl looks – and tastes – like the real McCoy. You need:
• ½ cup soft butter
• ¾ cup castor sugar
• 2 egg whites, lightly whisked
• seeds of 1 vanilla pod
• 1 cup cake flour
• a pinch of salt Here’s how: 1. Mix the lot. Preheat the oven to 180 ºC. Stir the butter to soften it and mix in the castor sugar. Add the rest of the ingredients and stir until well blended. 2. Draw the line. Grease an oven pan with butter. Use a pastry or icing bag fitted with a small nozzle to pipe 5 cm long lines of batter on the pan – not too close together, as the dough spreads quite a lot. 3. Raise the temperature. Place the pan in the middle of the oven and bake for 12 – 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and leave to cool for a few minutes before placing them on a flat surface to cool completely. Kletskoppen: Peanut snaps
Where does the name come from? Some people think it’s because you slap (klets) the little balls of dough flat with a teaspoon before baking them, but Femmy says the little dough balls are spread without being whacked, and she has no idea where the name comes from. You need:
• 125g soft butter
• 250g light-brown sugar
• 100g cake flour
• 125g peanuts, shelled and salted
• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon Here’s how: 1. Cause a stir. Preheat the oven to 180 ºC. Stir the butter to soften it and mix in the sugar. Then add the cake flour and stir some more. Lastly, add the peanuts and cinnamon, and stir again. 2. Use your hands. Roll the mixture into balls just a little bigger than a marble and put them on a greased baking sheet with about 7cm clear around them, so they have room to spread. 3. Put them in the oven. Bake the kletskoppen for 10 minutes. Leave them for a minute and then remove them from the baking sheet (otherwise, Femmy warns, they’ll stick). Leave them on a flat surface to cool completely.
Good old South African biscuit recipies
Currant biscuits and ginger biscuits are old favourites that have sustained many children during the school holidays.
Currant biscuits: Fly cemeteries
Just as they delight in eating the animals in zoo biscuits, children enjoy munching through sweet,
buried “flies”. You need: • ½ cup soft butter
• 2 cups sugar
• 1½ cup milk
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cream of tartar
• 4 eggs, separated
• 4 cups cake flour
• 1 cup currants Here’s how: 1. Beat and blend. Preheat the oven to 200ºC. Beat the butter and sugar together until light and creamy. In another bowl, blend the milk and baking soda. 2.White… In a third bowl, mix the cream of tartar with the egg whites and whisk until stiff. 3. And yellow. Add the egg yolks one at a time to the butter mixture and beat well in-between. 4. Stirring stuff! Add a little of the milk mixture alternated with a little flour to the butter mixture, and stir well with a wooden spoon before you add more. 5. Add the flies! Stir the currants into the mixture. 6. Get some air. Fold the egg-white mixture into the batter and spoon teaspoonfuls of the mixture onto a greased baking sheet. Bake the biscuits for 15 minutes.
Triple-ginger biscuits: Three times as good
People either love or hate ginger biscuits. With three different types of ginger in these, lovers will go ginger-crazy! You need:
• 1kg self-raising flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
• ½ teaspoon dried ground ginger
• 500g (1 block) soft butter
• 2 cups soft brown sugar
• 1 cup golden syrup
• 1 piece fresh ginger of about 2cm
• ½ cup preserved ginger, drained and chopped
• 2 eggs, beaten Here’s how: 1. High and dry. Preheat the oven to 180ºC. Sift the dry ingredients and set the bowl aside. 2. Feel the beat. Mix the butter, sugar, syrup, fresh ginger and preserved ginger with a wooden spoon. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix well. Add the eggs and blend until it forms a soft dough. 3. Rock ’n’ roll. Roll out the dough to about 3mm. Use a cookie cutter to cut out individual biscuits. Bake for 8–10 minutes.
Gadget of the month
Press it like a pro
No doubt your granny’s old metal cookie cutters have great sentimental value and you’ll carry on using them for years to come, but keep an eye out for fun new shapes such as stars and hearts. We found these jigsaw cookie cutters online at Muji (www.muji.eu) for £7.
Keep them fresh
• Line a cake tin or airtight plastic container with waxed paper, sprinkle a little sugar in the bottom and fill it with biscuits. This way they’ll remain crisp. If you do use an old-fashioned cake tin, cover the top of the biscuits with waxed paper too.
• Don’t pack the biscuits too tightly in the container; you don’t want to arrive at your campsite or holiday house with a tin of crumbs.
• Bake the biscuits the weekend before you depart. They’ll be fresh and there’ll be less time before the start of the holiday to polish them off.
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