The first pepernoten were already in shops by mid-August this year. We can imagine that by the time Sinterklaas returns to Spain, you will be fed up with the St Nicholas candy. But what about that broken bag? A shame to throw it away! With these quick recipes, you can turn your leftover ginger nuts and peppernuts into a delicious dessert, surprising cake or even a savoury dish. Bet you will deliberately hide an extra bag in the back of the cupboard next year? Thank thegreenlist.nl later!
The ‘problem’ of leftover gingerbread and peppercorns
Are you someone who is up to the elbow in a bag of spiced nuts as soon as possible? If so, the ‘problem’ of leftover gingerbread and peppercorns is unlikely to arise in your household. And you are not the only gingerbread fan. Every year, we all eat more than three billion gingernuts, reports pepper nut manufacturer Van Delft. That is an average of 396 sweets per person per year. And yet a lot of sweets end up in the bin every year after 5 December to make way for Christmas sweets.
Peppernuts vs spiced nuts
Actually, the crunchy nuts we colloquially call pepernoten are not pepernoten, but spiced nuts. The original pepernoten are soft and irregularly shaped. They look much more like cake cake. Meanwhile, the terms pepernoten and kruidnoten are used interchangeably. Even the Van Dale no longer makes much distinction. For the recipes below, we use the semicircular speculaas balls that most people just call pepernoten, but officially it is a kruidnoot.
Why does that bag of gingerbread have to be empty in one go?
Hardly anyone manages to put the bag away after eating a single peppercorn. That bag has to be empty! There is a reason for this: the substance leptin. The high sugar content in peppernuts suppresses the effect of this substance. And let that play an important role in regulating satiety. Good excuse though, if that bag is suddenly completely empty again...
Once you know this recipe for spiced nut tiramisu, you'll never want long fingers in your tiramisu again.
Recipes with leftover spiced nuts
With their spicy specula ash flavour, Kruidnoten are like round speculaas biscuits. Handy, because that means they are also perfectly usable after Saint Nicholas Eve, but in a different form. Because good cloves are spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger powder, cardamom and white pepper, they can be used both sweet and savoury.
Herb stew
That delicious deep, wintry flavour of a stew is often the result of gingerbread. Sound crazy? It's not that bad! The addition of gingerbread or gingerbread binds your stew nicely. Moreover, the cake adds a nice spicy flavour. And you achieve exactly the same effect by adding a handful of gingernuts! Whether you are making a game stew or a mushroom stew, spiced nuts will give your dish that extra wintery kick!
Cake base of spiced nuts
Do you like to bake? Then you probably know what to do with those leftover spiced nuts. Whereas many recipes - especially recipes for no bake cakes - call for a biscuit base, you can also use crumbled cloves. Throw your cloves in the food processor for a moment and mix with some (vegetable) butter, press and leave to set in the fridge and you have the perfect base.
Baking with leftover spiced nuts
The specula flavour of cloves makes them combine wonderfully with all kinds of other ingredients. Leftover spiced nuts and pepernoten are therefore the perfect decoration on, for example, a chocolate cake, but an apple crumble cake is also extra tasty with spiced nuts. Simply replace your butter-sugar crumbs with cloves and you have a delicious winter apple pie.
Also super delicious is a banana bread with leftover peppernuts or spiced nuts. Banana and gingerbread is the perfect combination. You also kill two birds with one stone, because this way you immediately process the overripe bananas that you might have had left in the fruit bowl.
Spiced nut tiramisu
This recipe is a dangerous one, because the combination between the specula flavour of the cloves and the creamy mass is so delicious that you will never again reach for the long fingers when making tiramisu. The recipe is also super-simple, as you simply replace the ladyfingers in any tiramisu recipe with cloves. For an extra surprise, alternate layers of crumbled cloves with layers of whole cloves. For children, you can replace the coffee and liqueur with chocolate milk. And for a vegan version, you can replace the eggs with aquafaba (chickpea liquid, read about egg replacements here). And don't forget to decorate with cocoa and spiced nuts, of course!
Muesli bar
Do you ever make your own granola bars? Often bought granola bars are full of rubbish, while such a handy bar as a quick snack is quite handy sometimes. This variant may not be the healthiest, but it is a very tasty one. And hey, it's December! For this bar, mix oatmeal with finely ground spiced nuts, peanut butter or tahini, syrup and some sultanas. Heat the wet ingredients, mix them with the dry ones, push them into a mould (a baking tin works fine) and leave to set in the freezer. Cut into pieces and your December bars are ready.
No more leftover spiced nuts
Did you expect to be able to do so many different things with that leftover bag of gingerbread or peppernuts? Those 600 grams of sweets you eat every year might double now that you can add these recipes to your repertoire. Not much of a kitchen prince or just plain lazy and still want to get rid of those leftover sweets? Then we have another bonus tip for you. Simply throw the cloves in your food processor and whirl them into a soft crumb. Great sweet bread spread!
More green holiday tips from thegreenlist.nl
- The easiest recipe for vegan spiced nuts.
- Make your own giant vegan chocolate letter.
- Need inspiration for sustainable gift wrapping? Take a quick look at these zero waste packing tips.
- Also a Christmas tree you can choose more durable.
- Leftover oliebollen? Bake oliebollen-wentelteefjes!
Photo credits: Mahlee Plekker.
