The cakes of Amsterdam

Mr CC and I are back from our travels to Amsterdam, the capital city of the Netherlands.  I hadn’t expected that much from Amsterdam in terms of cakes and baking and was therefore pleasantly surprised by what we found...albeit most of it coming from one shop!

The star of the show, in terms of baking, is the wacky and rather wonderful De Taart van m’n Tante which is well worth the tram ride out of the town centre to reach it.  Take a No24 tram and you’re there in about 10 minutes.  We went twice and thoroughly enjoyed the quality of the baking and the ambience.  There was a large menu of delights:

Which looked as good as they sounded:

And were enjoyed in a comfortable and eclectic setting:

On our first visit I went for the Dutch apple tart, and Mr CC the chocolate truffle cake.  I loved the generous helping of cinnamon with the apples – a perfect combination.  Note that Mr CC started on his cake before I could get a photo...proof of how desperately he wanted to get stuck in!

On our second visit I chose the Mon Cherie which was a lovely balance of sweet and tart, and Mr CC chose the lemon tart.  They get top marks for the generosity of the portion size:

I had read about Dutch sugar bread (a spicy eggy bread) being a popular breakfast treat and was keen to try it.  We found a cafe serving it along with homemade jam.  It was amazing – like warm and spicy bread pudding but much lighter.  The homemade jam was left quite tart and complimented it perfectly.  I ate this whole plate without drawing breath:

The final Dutch speciality I wanted to sink my fangs into was poffertjes – little puffy pancakes.  I expected these to feature on more menus than they did.  For the first few days we always saw them when we didn’t want them, and then, when I did want them we couldn’t find them!  Luckily, when we visited the Waterlooplein flea market we found this stall selling them:

Poffertjes are small puffy pancakes.  I watched the stall holder to see how he prepared them – after cooking he dabbed butter on them which melted, and then a liberal dredging of vanilla sugar.  Need I say they tasted divine?

This isn’t cake related but amused me.  When we walked through the Chinatown region of Amsterdam we spotted a fixed price all-you-can-eat buffet.  What set this apart was the time limit.  I’d never seen a buffet limited to an hour and wondered how they policed it – does each table come with an alarm clock?  I liked how it added a food challenge, Man v Food element to the meal.  And no...we didn’t try it!