Spicy kletskoppen by Yvette

Kletskoppen are a typical Dutch biscuit, or rather a typical Dutch variety of the biscuit family that concerns itself with buttery/sugary biscuits. Think brandy snaps, only not rolled up. The name 'kletskop' literally means 'bald heads', not sure where that comes from; maybe 'fat belly' would have been a better name as these cookies are pretty fat and the type that you just have to keep on eating.

Anyway, I was in charge of the dessert for Christmas (again) this year and I'd decided to make cranberry/walnut brownies by Paul with ice cream. But since those are both 'soft' foods, I wanted to add something with a crunch. Hence the kletskoppen, which some restaurants also serve when you order brownies for dessert (better steal a good idea than think up a bad one, as we say in Dutch).
So, I looked up kletskoppen recipes and of course Yvette has one. It is one of the easiest recipes I've ever seen from her, perfect for a rainy afternoon where you don't know what to do with yourself. It needed a couple of things I didn't have, as I conceived of this plan in the early hours of Christmas day, but I made do with what I had. I'll put in the actual recipe and what I made of it.

Ingredients

250 g light muscovado sugar

75 g almonds, chopped (I did not have 75 grams, but I'm guessing 50 is the lowest you can go)

125 g flour

125 g butter

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon five-spice powder (I didn't have this, but I added some of the separate ingredients: cinnamon, nutmeg (should really be cloves, but they're close to the same thing), pepper and fennel, the only thing missing was star anise)

Preheat the oven to 200 C.

Line a baking tin with baking parchment. Yvette actually tells you to butter a baking tin, but as these things already emit loads of butter upon baking, I decided to use paper instead.

Quickly combine all the ingredients into a ball. Separate the big ball into smaller balls, about 25 in total.

Put the smaller balls in groups of 6 or 8 on your baking tin, leaving lots of space in between. 

Lots of space means lots of space.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, keeping a constant watch. They're done when they're flat and brown.

Take the tin out of the oven, leave the biscuits to cool for a little while and then remove them with a pallet knife to cool and harden completely. 

Keep in an airtight tin, otherwise they'll become soft pretty quickly.

As you can see, these are the same six balls, only now they're kletskoppen.

I took them out after 8 minutes, which I think may have been a bit too soon; some were really nice and dark brown, with that characteristic caramel taste, but some of them were still a bit doughy or soft. But the taste was still really good, much more spicy then those you buy from the supermarket. And they worked really nice with the brownie and ice cream, too!

Christmas dessert combo.