Oliebollen at the closing of 2013

After writing almost (well...) 25 blogs on Swedish traditions, time to close off this year by writing about an odd Dutch tradition: oliebollen. 

One would think that New Year's Eve is not the time to eat anything fried and covered with sugar. After all, we have just survived two (or three?) Christmas dinners. The Dutch think otherwise. We eat oliebollen (literally: oil-balls): they are made by frying a dough of flour, yeast, succade, raisins and covering it with a nice layer of powdered sugar.

A good baker can make relatively 'healthy' oliebollen, which contain only a limited amount of fat. However, a yearly test by one of Holland's national papers shows that many bakers have not mastered this skill and thus produce tasteless balls swamped with oil. Home-baking is in this case to be preferred. (Which it actually always is, if you'd ask me.) 

For some reason, baking oliebollen is and has always been my father's hobby. About ten years ago, my mother and he would have long discussions on how much flour dad was 'allowed' to use: 4 or 6 (500 gram) pounds? (My mother wished she could stop him at 2 pounds, but at those times this was quite impossible.) If I told you that today's 2 pounds resulted in 106 oliebollen, you might understand my mother's reluctance.

Personally, I like oliebollen, but I do not love them. However, their fat and sweet smell remind me of many New Year's Eves before, of family and friends, good dinners and crazy games and quizzes to beat the time until 12. Of good times, in sum. Which is what many December (food) traditions do, it seems. :-)

Since Christmas dinner last week, I have realised that my audience might be somewhat bigger than the three people (mum, dad, grandma) I always imagined: some uncles and aunts apparently also follow this blog. Therefore I wish al my (more than 10?!) readers all the best for 2014. I hereby state that one of my good intentions is to write at least four blogs a month. Remind me December 31st, 2014 and we'll see whether I managed.