Sprinkles for Breakfast
I didn’t know about hagelslag before visiting Amsterdam, but my local friend quickly filled me in on this Dutch food. When I first heard the word, I couldn’t escape the image of Scotland’s traditional dish, Haggis. I was very, very wrong thinking that. Hagelslag isn’t sheep innards simmered in a stomach at all. It’s actually buttered toast topped with sprinkles.
Delicious, right? Can’t go wrong with butter, bread, and sprinkles. But even with only three ingredients, hagelslag is pretty tough to eat. Frankly, it has some engineering failures. I love me some sprinkles, but only when they are well secured by more sugar. Hagelslag lacks either frosting or a glaze to hold down the sprinkles. As wonderful as butter tastes, it fails as an adhesive. These Hagelslag sprinkles are completely loose, precariously balanced on frictionless bread and prone to falling off if you don’t eat the bread completely horizontally. With every lift of the bread, a few more sprinkles roll away and meet their unfortunate fate of hitting the ground, uneaten. I tried to eat over my basket so I could eat the rebel sprinkles later. This is when I discovered there is no dignified way to eat a handful of loose sprinkles. Try it. It’s impossible.
It seems like the Dutch have learned to overcome these hagelslag pitfalls and are going back for seconds. They even sell hagelslag in their grocery stores.
And this is a breakfast item, which isn’t really strange, I guess. Having a little something sweet to start the day seems to be a Western World favorite. Americans have donuts, and the Dutch have hagelslag. But there must be some way to make these chocolate sprinkles more easily spreadable on bread. Like, some kind of spreadable chocolate. Wait a second, that’s Nutella! Far be it for me to try and change a nation’s traditional food choices, but seriously, someone tell the Dutch about Nutella. It would solve all of my eating problems when I visit their country.
