Merry Christmas

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas with family or friends!

How to make pepernoten

Pepernoten (spice nuts) are a special dutch Sinterklaas treat. They are very small round cookies. They are not really difficult to make, but I still managed to burn my first batch today. The recipe is enough for 3 baking sheets full of these, so I still had two batches that turned out nicely.The recipe uses speculaas spices, which you can buy in dutch supermarkets but probably not anywhere else. Click here to see how you can make it yourself.



Ingrediënts
250 g self raising flour
125 g brown sugar
6 tsp speculaas spices
150 g butter
2 tbsp milk

How to make it
Preheat the oven at 160 degrees C. Put the flour, sugar, speculaas spices and the butter in a bowl and mix it until a dough starts to form. Then slowly add the milk and knead it through the dough. Put a sheet of baking paper on the baking sheet. Make small rolls of the dough, put them on the baking paper and flatten them a little. Bake them for about 10-15 minutes. Check from time to time to see if they already have a nice golden brown color.

Enjoy!

Sinterklaas

Today it's 5 december and in the Netherlands it's St. Nichola's eve. It's the evening where Sinterklaas brings everyone presents. It's a bit like Santa Claus. There are special songs and treats for Sinterklaas.
Sinterklaas usually arrives midway november on his steamship from Spain along with his helpers, the Zwarte Pieten (Black Petes). From the day Sinterklaas arrives up until 4 december children can in the evenings put hay or a carrot in their shoe for Sinterklaas's horse and during the night the Zwarte Pieten will replace it with candy or a small present. They also sing songs when they have put something in their shoe. Pepernoten (spice nuts) are very small round treats that are handed out by Zwarte Pieten. I will post a recipe of how to make them. Furthermore lots of people receive a chocolate letter, which is usually the first letter of their name.

As a kid Sinterklaas was my favorite holiday and it was always an exciting time.

Here are some Sinterklaas songs to get in the right mood!

St. Martin's Day

Yesterday (11 november) it was St. Martin's Day (Sint-Maarten in the Netherlands). On that day children in my country go out as soon as it is dark with their paper lanterns and go door to door. They sings songs and get candy or fruit. When I was a kid we always used to carve pumpkins with the children in my street. My mum made pumpkin soup and after dinner we would go out with our carved or paper lanterns. It was always one of my favorite days of the year. I carved the pumpkin above two years ago. This year we were a little busy so we didn't really do anything related to Sint Maarten, except for buying candy for the kids, but most years I still carve a pumpkin and my mother still makes pumpkin soup (I don't go door to door anymore though, haha!).

Yesterday my mother had put all sorts of candy in a bowl along with some mandarins. I remembered how I as a kid always prefered candy over fruit, so I said to my mother 'Which child is going to pick a mandarin over candy?' But already with the second group of children that came to our house, my mother said: 'The miracle has happened, one of them took a mandarin'. I was sitting in the living room when the third group rang the doorbell. They sang their song and when my mom presented them the candy and the fruit, I could hear a couple of kids yell 'Mandarins!!' enthusiastically. That already surprised me, but then the children's mother said 'Ugh, we already have two weeks of mandarins'.
I don't know what it is with children and their parents these days, haha. Maybe it some sort of reverse psychology were the parents say they hate fruit and love candy so their kid wants fruit rather than candy.

Halloween party

Last saturday Suzan and I had organised a halloween party for our friends. We had decorated the house and almost everyone had dressed up.

Credits for making up my face and making my hair blue go to Suzan. 

I don't know what it is, always when I wear make-up or something I'm like 'please don't cry, please don't cry' and then everything gets ten times as funny and I need to laugh so hard that I start to cry. Of course it happened again, and the black paint around my eyes followed my tears and left a trail. It actually suited my look this time, though!

 

Here are some pictures of our decorations;

 To the right (on the ground ) my homemade, fake, chopped off arm can be seen.

 We had collected a lot of bottles and jars to fill them with creepy stuff.

We decorated white fabric with red hands and splatters and used it as a table-cloth. In the back, to the right, you can see our headless bartender.

My mom's birthdayparty

A while ago my mom had her birthday but my father and brother were out of town, so Suzan and I decided to throw her a little party. There was no one else who was able to come, but I think my mom liked it nonetheless.

We made chocolate cakes, salad, vegetable tart, tzatziki, sandwiches and we had mint tea and cookies. We decorated our living room and I gave my mother a book and a painting (made by myself ofcourse).

I love throwing birthday parties, no matter how small they are.

What is your perfect way to spend a birthday?

Follow my blog on Bloglovin

Graduation gala

A picture of our graduation gala! From left to right: Sophie, Chantalle, me and Suzan.
My friends and I had a blast. It was so much fun to see everyone dressed up and watching our former teachers go crazy on the dancefloor.

 This photo was taken in front of our school at the reception at school. From left to right: Lieke-Rosa, me, Chantalle, Sophie and Suzan.

Our graduation will be next thursday, so then I'm finally done with highschool!

Catching up

I totally forgot about Music Monday this week because I was to bussy and I got sick. Next week there will be music again ;). I am participating in Camp NaNoWriMo's July session (my goal is to write 50.000 words) and I've been bussy keeping up with my wordtrack. So far I am doing pretty good.

Yesterday my friends and I got together and we watched Silver linings playbook. After that we dressed up for a reception at school and our graduation gala. We had a great evening and soon I will post some pictures ;).

Furthermore I got into Maastricht University's Science programme, but I'm not sure yet if it is really what I want to do. I still would love to take a gap year and travel.

Queensday 2013 - The coronation of a new king

Yesterday it was Queensday in the Netherlands and it was the day Queen Beatrix abdicated in favour of her son Willem-Alexander. Now he is our king.

This video is ofcourse in Dutch, but it will give a little impression.

I spend the day selling a lot of stuff at the freemarket with my friend Sophie. We had a blast. Later I saw the ceremony on tv at home and we ate tompoezen (maybe tompouce is a known English word, but I couldn't find a translation). The little princesses looked so cute in their blue dresses and Máxima (Willem-Alexander's wife) also looked stunning.

Birthday party with family and friends

Because I'll turn 18 coming week, I celebrated my birthday yesterday with my friends and family.
I had made so many plans to make food, but I think I wasn't totally being realistic, because is was way to much work for the short amount of time I had. At the end my mom helped me a little, but still one dish I couldn't make. But I'll tell you wat I did make!

I started by making a cake with strawberry and white chocolate filling. I wasn't quite finished when my friends showed up, so Suzan and Sophie helped to decorate it. It think it turned out really pretty and it also tasted great.

I made Harissa, Feta and Tomato Tartlets, you can find the recipe here. They tasted really good and looked so beautiful! The photo of the end result I took later that evening. It already was quite dark outside, so the photo is really bad, but it'll give you a little impression.

To the right you can see grilled suchinni pizza slices I made, using this recipe. Furthermore I made crepe lasagne with spinach and ricotta.The recipe was in french, so I used Google Translate to translate it. It turned out a little funny, but it was clear what the directions were supposed to be.

My parents had bought champagne, to toast on my birthday. My friends and I played boardgames and ate a lot of food the rest of the day.

Although it wasn't my birthday yet, I had an amazing day.