Ontbijtkoek

 When I am visiting my mother she makes sure she has ontbijtkoek. For those who don't what that is; it's some sort of spice cake (generally made with rye flour) that you can eat as cake (sometimes with butter on top) or on bread. I do both! In Britain you can't buy it as far as I know, and importing it is prohibitively expensive since brexit. Not that I tried before brexit, but I have had a look since, and I'm just not going to do it. The ontbijtkoek would be reasonably priced, but postage would be ridiculous. So could I make it myself?

I had wondered before, but the rye flour was beating me. I buy my flour in the local Whole Foods Co-op, and they didn't sell it, as far as I was aware. But one day when I saw they had it in stock I immediately bought a bag. Ready for ontbijtkoek!

One Saturday I set to work. I had googled some various recipes to see which one I liked. To my annoyance, quite a lot of them actually used wheat flour. I had not bought rye flour for nothing! And I settled on one that had 100% rye flour, and used buttermilk. The local shop stocks that! And I like it, so if some would be left over, I would just drink it.

I was supposed to heat the buttermilk with syrup and sugar, and then add that to the flour and spices. Then I could add baking powder. I did all that. The recipe then said I should pour the batter into a baking tin. Pour it? Mine was a clump! I decided to just add some more buttermilk. And then I put it in a tin that wasn't anywhere near ontbijtkoek-shaped, but would have to do. And then the wait started! The recipe said at least an hour, but mine was thinner than standard, so I figured it would need to bit less time. And when I checked after 45 minutes it was already done. So what was the verdict?

My ontbijtkoek was chewier than intended, but it clearly tasted of ontbijtkoek! I figured the spice mix needed a little bit of finetuning as well, but it wasn't bad. The next day and was going to go on a hike, so I could try it out as sandwich filling in a suitable context!