"Chocolate Sprinkles for Bread"

[Schneier]

So, I'm currently in my Amsterdam Hotel (Okura) looking over my room-service breakfast.

Among the more normal thing is a small box of chocolate sprinkles. The box clearly shows that I am supposed to put it on my toast. The one bit of English reads "Pure chocolate sprinkles for bread."

Can someone help me out here. What's the deal? Do I butter the toast first?

Bruce

[tammylc]

My friend Kim had a box of those, brought to her by a Dutch friend. You can actually buy them in several different flavors. Not sure whether you should butter first or not, although it seems like it might help make the sprinkles stick...

[bishwells]

Hi, according to my Dutch colleague, should be bread, not toast, with butter then sprinkles.

[Schneier]

Hi, according to my Dutch colleague, should be bread, not toast, with butter then sprinkles.

Um, okay.

At least it's adult chocolate.

[Schneier]

I tried it this morning. It was, um, okay.

[Jason Perlow]

I'm thinking they taste much better in Amsterdam coffee shops with a nice fat doobie on the side.

[tan319]

I'm thinking they taste much better in Amsterdam coffee shops with a nice fat doobie on the side.

[cakewench]

This sounds like me when I was first confronted with 'fairy bread' when I lived in Australia. Except they don't even use the semi-edible sprinkles on the bread, they use those impossibly hard tiny candy... dots. I never quite warmed up to it.

Certainly sounds like an interesting breakfast food.

[alicia]

We spend some holidays in Holland with my husband's Dutch family, and I always make sure to pick up several boxes of sprinkles to take home. I have found that putting the dark chocolate ones on buttered bread (use GOOD butter or peanut butter), and then toasting in the toaster oven makes a truly yummy snack. There are a bunch of variations of these things - milk and dark chocolate and strawberry sprinkles that look like "jimmies", milk, white and dark chocolate shavings, anise-flavored tiny ball-shaped sprinkles, and an anise flavored topping that looks like powdered sugar, which is my favorite. The anise flavored round sprinkles translate loosely into "mice", and the powdered sugar stuff translates into "stamped mice", which I find endlessly amusing....

Also, people eat this stuff on round dry toasts that are like giant melba rounds. Apparently, there is some kind of tradition involving serving and/or eating the "mice" (which come in pink and blue) when a new baby is born. Don't recall the details though.

[Fritz Brenner]

i love these. the anise flavor is awesome.

the idea of putting sprinkles on bread is so nice to me.

[hillvalley]

They sound amazing. Can you get them in the US? Is there a website that sells them? What term should I use in my search?

[stevie]

Also, people eat this stuff on round dry toasts that are like giant melba rounds.  Apparently, there is some kind of tradition involving serving and/or eating the "mice" (which come in pink and blue) when a new baby is born.  Don't recall the details though.

The dry toast rounds are called beschuit, and they're just the local version of a twice baked rusk. A drift to the west of zweiback, if you will. Picture a round a centimeter thick, with a diameter of say 10 cm, very crisp and light. The first baking is as a loaf and then you slice and bake for the second.

Since I work mostly with men, I haven't experienced a female colleague having a baby. But the guys all take some time off when their partners have a baby, and on their first day back at work they bring "beschuit met muisjes", simply beschuit spread with margarine and sprinkled with muisjes, pink if it's a girl and blue if it's a boy. It's time to shake hands and acknowlege that your colleague will be sleep deprived for the forseeable future.

[stevie]

They sound amazing.  Can you get them in the US?  Is there a website that sells them?  What term should I use in my search?

The generic term for the sprinkles is "hagelslag", and the specific term for the anise ("anijs") ones is "muisjes". There are lots of websites selling to the Dutch abroad, and the first one I come up with is Holland's Best. There's "beschuit" there too, if you want the full experience.

[helenjp]

Thanks for the website..my sister sends them to my kids for Sinterklaas, but they just can't wait till December.

Of course, they like the chocolate hail best, but I prefer the aniseed ones...makes me feel very Elizabethan eating "comfits" on my bread!