Name: Peperkoek
Yield: Makes 1 or 2 peperkoek (see the photograph)
Cuisine: Belgian
Ingredients: 200 ml (7 fl oz) buttermilk (or milk with 2 tablespoons lemon juice); 100 g (3½ oz) caster (superfine) sugar; 400 g (14 oz) sugar beet syrup, appelstroop, glucose syrup, golden syrup or runny honey; 250 g (9 oz) runny honey; Coffee creamer or milk, for coating the spoon; 2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda (baking soda); 200 g (7 oz) pearl sugar (nib sugar), optional – large nibs are best, but small is fine too; 600 g (1 lb 5 oz) white rye flour or spelt flour if you can’t get rye; 1 teaspoon each of ground nutmeg, ground ginger, ground coriander, ground cardamom, ground long or black pepper, ground cloves*; ½ teaspoon ground aniseed; pinch (⅛ teaspoon) of salt; 2 tablespoons ground cinnamon

Preparation info

Makes
1
peperkoek (see the )

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Dark Rye and Honey Cake

By Regula Ysewijn

Published 2023

About

Although it had been a product uniquely baked by registered koekbakkers, around the beginning of the 20th century recipes for a variety of loaf peperkoek (pepper cake) start to appear in textbooks used in the bakery school. In a book from 1927, there are eight recipes for this type of koek and, while these recipes are very similar, there are a few differences: bakeries would usually have offered a couple of options. All recipes use (sifted) rye flour – there is no discussion t