Letter Di Pinda

‘Letter di Pinda’ are delicious peanut cookies baked on Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao. Traditionally, but nobody knows why, they make the letter S, so I'll make a S as well, but feel free to make the letter you want. They are not the most beautiful cookie’s but the taste is irresistible. I got the (slightly modified) recipe from our landlord. Originally, unsalted roasted peanuts were used that needed grinding. I go for convenience and use peanut butter. 

kitchenware:

2 bowls for mixing ingredients 

6 bowls to weight ingredients 

1 cup for the eggs

Mixer

Teaspoon

Baking tray

Baking paper

Plastic foil

Scale

Sieve

Oven

Ingredients:

250 G peanut butter

400 G self-raising flour

1 teaspoon ground (Ceylon) cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

150 G unsalted butter

225 G Crystal sugar

3 eggs

Pinch of salt

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

1 teaspoon almond essence

Some flower to cover the workplace and baking tray

Bowl 1: Sift flour. Then mix all dry ingredients. I use Ceylon cinnamon which has a finer taste but any cinnamon will do.

Bowl 2: Beat the butter with the sugar to a light cream, then add the eggs 1 at a time. Only add the next egg after the previous egg has been completely incorporated. Then add peanut butter and essences.

Add bowl 1 to bowl 2. Mix to a smooth dough.

Let the dough rest for an hour in the fridge. 

Because I only want to use a quarter of the dough, I save the rest of it for Christmas, I divided the dough in 4 parts. Also do this when you live in a warm climate to keep your dough cool and easier to work with.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius/ 356° Fahrenheit.

Line a baking tray with baking paper and dust with some flour, the flour makes it easier to shape the letters.

If you want large letters, take a piece of dough the size of a ping pong ball and roll it out into a string of about 20 cm long and 1 to 1.5 cm in diameter, if the dough is very sticky, dust your hands with some flour. Or if you want small letters, make a ball half the size of a pingpong ball and roll it out to 10/12 cm long and slightly thinner than a cm in diameter.

Place the string on the baking tray in the shape of the letter S (or a different letter of your choise).

Bake the big letters in about 25/30 minutes until golden brown and crispy or the small ones in 20/25 min. Let cool and enjoy.

From one package of dough I make 9 letters.

Leftover dough is easy to freeze and will keep for up to 3 months.

The letters can also kept frozen for a maximum of 3 months.

Warning: once you start eating it's hard to stop!