The one biscuit I miss the most is speculoos. I used to have it on a sandwich, dunked in hot chocolate, or just as is. So I started baking my own: I experimented with the spice mix, tweaked the recipe and voilà …
I work with Belgian recipes, handed down from my gran or from Belgian pastry chefs, and make them the way I would for my own family. In all my biscuits, I only use fresh butter and free range eggs. Artisan means for me that the dough is mixed carefully, the biscuits are cut by hand, one by one, and baked in small batches. I hope you can taste the effort and passion that goes into them, and embrace the variation between them.
These biscuits are available at the Kirstenbosch Craft and Food market, but not all of them at every market (if the market is too long to wait, do drop me an email). They are baked the week before the market. I can only get them fresher to you if I come bake them in your own kitchen!
There are:
Speculoos: crunchy, cinnamon is the main spice
Gevulde speculoos: soft, with almond filling
Spice biscuits: soft, the mix contains 10 different spices
Chocolate cookies: crunchy, with real cocoa powder
Orange: soft, with candied citrus peel
Vanilla ganache: vanilla cookies with dark chocolate ganache in between
Mattentaart: a baked ‘cheese cake’, a specialty of the town of Geraardsbergen in Oost Vlaanderen
Meringue kisses: mini meringues, often with an image on the bottom if there is a holiday coming up
Melo cakes: known in SA as cutie pies
Almond meringue thins: contains very little flour
Pepernoten: a treat for Sinterklaas time
and I have many more treats on my list to try out!