Queen's Day Treats!

The Dutch are overly modest about their culinary accomplishments, namely in the area of sweets. Pattisseries, bakeries, little cute shops brimming with cookies and cakes and tarts and breakfast buns are a dime a dozen in Amsterdam. It is an entire sub culture, and those in the know will buy their breakfast breads at the "bakerij," or baker, their small batch chocolates and cocoa at a "chocalatier," and their special occasion sweets at a "patisserie" or "confiserie."

The pattisserie Arnold Cornelis, pictured above, has several smart shops scattered around Amsterdam. It's very good, although my prejudice for the Van Muyden stroopwafels has colored my impression somewhat. However, certainly for eye candy the darling Arnold Cornelis shops really can't be beat. Many, like this one on tony Van Baerlestraat, have fancy glass panels decorating the overhang of their entrance.



Queen's Day will be upon us in a matter of weeks, and this patisserie has gone all out with the celebration of the royal House of Orange. I especially love the Barbie doll in the center of a cake and frosting orange skirt.



What a fun Queen's Day tray of treats! From left, Orange frosted pretzels, orange flower cookies, gold foil wrapped somethings with the crown on the paper, orange and chocolate crowns, white chocolate with tiny orange royal coaches stamped on it, chocolate hearts with little waving Dutch flags on them and tulip cookies. Eet smakelijk! Bon apetit!

Cooking in a foreign language.

Do you have a dictionary in your kitchen? I have learned most of my Dutch on the back of boxes in the kitchen. My husband is now quite accustomed to the sight of me, mid dinner-prep, rushing into the living room in a flour-covered apron to grab the dictionary and frantically leaf through it to get the meaning of some Dutch culinary instruction or listed ingredient. 

I picked up this box of chocolate mix cake on a lark, and was mid-prep when I noticed that the box said "Homeade." Cha! So, when I gave it to my beloved I told him it was homeade. Then, I whipped out the box and pointed to the word, "homeade." Clearly, I am a domestic goddess. "See? would I lie?"

But isn't it funny that the English word "homeade" crept onto a Dutch baking mix box? That they would opt for this word instead of a Dutch word meaning the same thing is just one little example of how English is woven into the language here.

So back to the Dutch bit. It was a downright lesson in Dutch sociology, this box of baking mix. At the end I was instructed to remove the cake when the word "sateprik" in the instructions tripped me up. What, you don't have sate sticks in your kitchen? The influence of Indonesia, a former Dutch colony, is most evident here at the culinary level. Many native Amsterdammers will point you to the nearest Indonesian place when you ask for a local restaurant recommendation. The most basic grocery store in Amsterdam will have a workable selection of Indonesian goods on their shelves. So, I suppose it was not that much of a stretch for the creator of the baking mix to assume I'd have a bag of sate sticks in the kitchen. This is what they suggested I use, not a toothpick, to test the doneness of the cake. 

The result? Okay for a snaking cake, but the Dutch "Dr. Oetker" brand cake mixes are the ones you want for that luscious Duncan-Hines almost as good as from scratch yumminess.