Have you ever gone in search of something and found something else entirely, something you had no idea you were looking for but that exactly fit your hidden craving? This hasn’t happened to me very often, but this time I’m really excited about it. I was looking for a cookie recipe. Not just any cookie recipe, but a spiced cookie recipe from Belgium that is made for St. Nicholas day, December 6th. This is traditionally the day that kicks off the holiday season and I decided that rather than make dozens and dozens of cookies for Christmas later in the month, I wanted to make some cookies now, some more next week and another batch or two the week after that so we can spread out the fun (and the calories).

I started looking for a good recipe for these Belgian cookies, called speculoos, and I did a search for St. Nicholas cookie recipes and instead came up with a Dutch pastry called banket or Dutch letters. Everywhere I saw it mentioned there were statements about this being the best cookie ever, about how this is always the first treat to disappear, about it being the thing that inspires people to trek all the way to places like the Jaarsma Bakery in Pella, Iowa, because Dutch bakeries aren’t that easy to find. With so many accolades, I started wondering what the fuss was about and had a look at the recipe.

It’s essentially an unsweetened piecrust dough rolled out extra thin, filled with a mixture of almond paste, sugar and eggs, rolled up and brushed with cream, milk or egg whites and sprinkled with sugar. Once rolled together, you can either leave them as straight sticks and bake them that way, or the rolls can be shaped into letters. Because these are for St. Nicholas day, they are often formed into the letter s (Sinterclaas in Dutch).

They are often also shaped into the first letter of people’s names or used to spell out Christmas greetings.

You could use them to spell anything at all really.

After reading about how the dough turns all flaky and puff pastry like, I was skeptical, it really looked like regular old pie crust to me, but wow, just flour, butter and water come together in an almost magical way here and the not-too-sweet pastry showcases the rich almond filling really well.

There are several names for these pastries. Dutch letters is used when you shape them into, duh, letter shapes. They are also called almond letters, almond banket or banket letters. Banket is a Dutch term for pastry, it actually means banquet and refers to the fact that pastries would have been set out after a meal on a table and the name transferred metonymically from the thing it would have sat on to the thing itself. Banquet is a word from French meaning small bench. It’s like the word pâté, which originally referred to the dough that meat or other ingredients were wrapped in but eventually came to refer to the filling. My favorite example of metonymy, replacing a term with one that is in close proximity, is when people say about a guy that he likes to "chase skirts," when everyone knows that it’s not really the skirt that he’s after. In any case, call these what you like, once you try them, you’ll also call them delicious.

banket or Dutch letters

for dough

• 2 cups flour
• 1/4 t salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, chilled and cut into small pieces
• approximately 1/2 cup cold water

Place flour and salt into bowl of food processor and pulse once or twice to mix, add butter and pulse until mixture resembles course crumbs (if you don’t have a food processor, use a pastry cutter). Add water a little at a time just until dough comes together. Turn dough out onto a sheet of plastic wrap, flatten it out into a rough rectangle and fold it onto itself in thirds (like a business letter). Chill at least two hours before using.

filling

• 8 oz. almond paste
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1/4 t almond extract
• 1/4 t vanilla extract

Place ingredients into bowl of food processor and pulse to combine (if you have no food processor, you can mix them together in a bowl using a wooden spoon). Place filling into the center of a piece of plastic wrap and chill at least one hour before using.

assembly and baking

• 1/2 cup cream
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 375 degrees and line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Cut filling into sixteen pieces and roll it between your hands to make ropes (if it sticks, use some powdered sugar on the filling and on your hands). Cut dough into sixteen pieces and roll to a rectangle about 5-6 inches long and about 1-1/2 inches wide with a thickness of about 1/8 inch. Place filling in the center of the dough, fold the short ends of dough over the filling and roll up jelly roll style. Shape the dough into letters and place on lined baking sheets at least one inch apart. Brush with cream and sprinkle with sugar. Bake for 20-25 minutes until cookies are golden brown.