Stroopwafel

Description

A stroopwafel's wafer layers are made from a stiff dough of flour, butter, brown sugar, yeast, milk, and eggs that has been pressed in a hot waffle iron until crisped. While still warm, the waffles have their edges removed with a cookie cutter, which allows the remaining disc to be easily separated into top and bottom wafers. A caramel filling made from syrup, brown sugar, butter, and cinnamon—also warm—is spread between the wafers before the waffle is reassembled. The caramel sets as it cools, thereby binding the waffle halves together.

History

According to Dutch culinary folklore, stroopwafels were allegedly first made in Gouda either during the late 18th century or the early 19th century by bakers repurposing scraps and crumbs by sweetening them with syrup. One story ascribes the invention of the stroopwafel to the baker Gerard Kamphuisen, which would date the first stroopwafels from somewhere between 1810, the year he opened his bakery, and 1840, the year of the oldest known recipe for syrup waffles. Stroopwafels were not found outside Gouda until 1870, by which point the city was home to around 100 syrup-waffle bakers..

As the Netherlands lacks a culinary tradition of waffle making, it is more likely that the Dutch stroopwafel was inspired by if not copied from recipes already circulating in Belgium or Flanders. Belgium, including the adjacent French Flanders, does have a centuries old tradition of making a huge variety of waffles, such as the "Brussels waffles" (aka "Belgian waffles" in North America), "Liège waffles", "Gaufres à la Flamande" (aka "Flemish waffles") and "Galettes campinoises". A version of thin wafer waffles with a sugar filling is widely known in northern France, viz. in the regional capital Lille (of French Flanders). This local waffle is known as the "gaufre fourrée lilloise", which consists of two thin wafer waffles filled with cassonade sugar and vanilla. A recipe for such a waffle with vanilla filling first appeared in 1849, in the workshop of the renowned patisserie, Maison Méert, from Lille. Waffles with a filling date back to the Middle Ages, as the famous guidebook for married women, Le Ménagier de Paris, compiled in 1393, already includes recipes of waffles with a cheese filling.

After 1870 stroopwafels began to appear in other cites, and in the 20th century, factory-made stroopwafels were introduced. By 1960, there were 17 factories in Gouda alone, of which four are still open. Today, stroopwafels are sold at markets, by street vendors, and in supermarkets, and since 2016 United Airlines has been serving stroopwafels as a breakfast snack on its domestic flights.

As a former Dutch colony, Indonesia also inherited the dish. It is locally known as wafel setrop or wafel sirop and is often eaten with sweet dressings such as honey and sirop.

Variants

Cookies similar to the stroopwafel may be found in parts of the Netherlands. Wafers with honey instead of syrup are sold as honingwafels, and cookies with a caramel syrup are sold as stroopkoeken. Crumbs of stroopwafels (trimmings from manufacturing) are also sold in candy cones.

Popular culture

In a September 2017 episode of the Great British Bake Off, the contestants had to make stroopwafels, but most failed in what some called the worst technical challenge in the show's history.