The Heavenly Appel-Flap

After about three weeks in Malaysia (well, make that 19 days), we've now acclimatized again to the Dutch climate, in every sense of the word. Weather, food, mode of transport (or lack thereof), places of interest.

Now that we are veering towards (or I might be wrong, we ARE in the midst) of winter, the current 10-hour of daylight must be put to good and efficient use, not to mention briskful. That is, fast-paced walking towards your 'confirmed' destination is paramount in ensuring a mammal-like body temperature and regular breathing. Okay I might be exaggerating on the breathing part. Hehe.

As indicated earlier, this 'short' entry will focus mainly on appel-flap. It's ubiquitious in the Dutch bakery scene, to be found in different bakery shops in Delft as well as in Hema! (This is from my own observation so I could be wrong) We first got the taste of this fluffy, delicious apple filling at the beginning of Ramadan. Wanting a dessert to subsitute for all the 'kueh' spread we are used to in Malaysia, we randomly chose the triangularly-shaped, sugar-encrusted pastry at BakkerJaap, a bakery across the canal in Koornmarkt.

After the first bite during Iftar, we couldn't get enough of it and more often than not, we would buy it for Iftar as our dessert menu, sometime ala mode with chocolate ice-cream or sorbet.

The apple filling, which is adequately sweet, includes cinnamon and a smattering of raisins but it's BakkerJaap's crumbly yet crunchy winning pastry that seals our approval and whets our appetite. After sampling different Appel-Flaps from two other bakeries, I'd say that the BakkerJaap's appel-flap is the best one we've eaten so far.

When we were in Malaysia recently, believe it or not, we were hankering for appel-flap and couldn't wait to go back and eat it! And true to our words, we bought them the first day we arrived home. At Euro1,35, it's quite big and can satisfy your craving for sweet. But of course, in the dead of winter, we tend to get hungry faster, so one piece may not be enough ;-)

p.s. the appel-flap photo was taken AFTER we have inadvertently taken one bite - we couldn't wait THAT long....sorry for the confusion :-)