Oliebollen and Appelflappen in February?
One thing that is like an insurmountable hurdle to me is transferring the pics from my camera to the computer, resizing them and getting them online. I don’t know why, well.. I do know why, because it’s a timeconsuming job, especially the resizing. Then again, once it’s done, I always think: hmm, that wasn’t so bad. But still I keep postponing the task, and that results in a post like today’s: Oliebollen and Appelflappen in February.
In Holland it’s a New Year’s Eve custom to eat oliebollen (literal translation is oilballs) and appelflappen (apple’flaps’) and they are delicious! You can buy them everywhere from the end of November: bakeries, supermarkets, grocery stores and special ‘oliebollen stalls’, but the very best are the homemade ones. It’s a lot of work and because hubby usually works that time of year (and I didn’t feel like baking on my own), we’ve bought ours for several years. But this year hubby had a few days off and we decided to give it a go.
On December 30th, Manon and Sebastian helped peeling, coring and slicing the apples, and then I covered the slices with sugar and cinnamon, hubby baked them and I covered them with the sugar/cinnamon mix again. They are a serious attack on your digestive system, but they’re worth it!
The same day hubby prepared the batter for the oliebollen, which had to rest and rise overnight. The next day the amount of batter blew me away. Amazing! With a scoop hubby put the batter in the hot oil and after that it’s just a matter of putting them on paper towels to get rid of the access fat, put some icing sugar on them and they’re ready to eat.
You can find a recipe for both oliebollen and appelflappen HERE, the link will open in a new window, just close it to come back to this blogpost.
If you want to see more Dutch recipes, here’s the direct link to Sparky’s Kitchen.
And here are the long overdue pictures of the baking event. Enjoy!