Dutch Spiced Breakfast Cake (Ontbijtkoek)
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8 Ingredients
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70 min total
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Serves Makes 1 loaf
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Easy
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Netherlands
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Dessert
Recipe byThe ZestyPlate Kitchen
Dutch ontbijtkoek: a dense, moist spiced breakfast cake flavoured with ginger and cardamom, topped with pearl sugar. Lovely sliced with butter.
Ontbijtkoek is a dense, dark, generously spiced Dutch breakfast cake, the sort of thing you might call a moist, honeyed relative of gingerbread. It comes together in a single bowl with no creaming and no faff, and it genuinely gets better after a day, turning stickier and more fragrant. Sliced and spread with cold butter beside a coffee, it's hard to beat.
Jump to recipe
Prep 10 min
Cook 60 min
Total 70 min
Easy
Scale:
- 250g Self-Raising Flour
- 250g Dark Brown Soft Sugar
- 250g Milk
- 4 Sugar
- 1 tablespoon Ginger
- 1/2 tsp Cardamom
- 1 tsp Baking Powder
- Pinch Salt
Preparation
- Heat the oven to 160C (320F), line a cake tin with parchment, and set it aside.
- Stir all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Warm the milk in a small pan until it's almost, but not quite, boiling.
- Pour the milk slowly into the dry ingredients while whisking, stopping the instant the batter turns smooth, then pour it into the tin. Scatter the pearl sugar over the top and bake for about 1 hour.
- Check at around 50 minutes: if a skewer comes out clean it's ready, otherwise give it a little longer.
Tips from the ZestyPlate Kitchen
- Once the warm milk goes in, stop mixing the moment the batter is smooth; overdo it and the crumb toughens.
- Bake it low and slow. This cake is supposed to be dense and moist rather than light and airy.
- Wrap it well and leave it a day before slicing, as the spice deepens and the texture grows lovely and sticky.
- A scattering of pearl sugar on top gives a pretty crackle, though it's entirely optional.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, ontbijtkoek is very forgiving. Cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon and aniseed all suit it, so lean towards whatever warm spices you like best.
Wrapped airtight, it stays moist for up to a week and freezes well too. The flavour really hits its stride from day two.
It was probably in the oven too long or baked too hot. Test at 50 minutes and take it out the moment a skewer comes clean.
Yes. Use plain flour and add about 2 teaspoons of baking powder to make up for it.
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