Do you know what a Stroopwafel is? Mr John is OBSESSED with them and can eat them for breakfast, lunch and supper! They’re a Dutch comfort food made of two thin wafer type biscuits with a caramel center. Think of a Caromelo Bear when it’s cold and the caramel is quite thick and firm. Woolies sells them but they weren’t very nice – until last week when I saw they had changed the recipe and we gave them a go. They tasted MUCH better, more like Hema’s stroopwafels (a retail chain). In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were from Hema!
Because Mr John loves them so much, we had to visit a famous Stroopwafel cafe while in Amsterdam. Using trusty old Trip Advisor, we made our way to Lanskroon, Amsterdam’s most famous stroopwafel shop.
We trunched our way along the cold Amsterdam, mini roads to the famous shop, which was fairly close to our hotel and near Dam Square. It was chilly out, hence our massively excited faces, LOL!
We were surprised to find a very small bakery on the corner of a block. With a charming door handle and fresh pastries in the counter, we were intrigued to know what made their stroopwafels so great.
On this day, they had two offerings – king wafel with limetree honey caramel and a coffee stroopwafel. Mr John doesn’t like honey so he took the coffee one.
Two perfectly round, smooth, crunchy waffles with a soft coffee caramel center. In hind sight, I reckon the honey would have been better (more traditional). The Lanskroon waffels are baked fresh, daily. You can see the waffles in store, resting and ready for hungry patrons.
I ordered a cup of tea, which was a bit unusual. They allow you to select your own tea and then give you a cup of water so that you can make it yourself. I would have preferred a pot of water! Is that cheeky? I mean, water’s free so I reckon having a pot would have been nicer. For someone who doesn’t drink much tea, I sure am fussy!! 😀
I don’t have much of a sweet tooth so I selected a lovely sausage roll, made mostly with veal in Holland. Perfectly golden, crispy on top, moist inside with a delicious filling. The filling in Holland really is very good.
I wish I could tell you more about the shop, but the people weren’t particular engaging. We told them we found the shop on Trip Advisor and they relied with, “we know”. Don’t think they asked us where we were from – we find that most people think we’re from England so they’re a bit off to us until we tell them we’re South African, then they’re really nice to us! But on this occasion, we just took a seat, had our eats and left.
Unfortunately we don’t have many stroopwafels to compare with the Lanskroon stroopwafels – we can only compare them to shop bought stroopwafels. We enjoyed the experience, but there’s nothing wrong with the Hema stroopwafels and we still love them! I’d like to discover more stroopwafel shops to compare them to in the future.
Have you visited Lanskroon? Did you love it? If you know where other wonderful stroopwafel shops are in Amsterdam, please feel free to leave the information in a comment below. 🙂
