Spekjes (Dutch Pink-and-White Marshmallows)

In my grandmother's second notebook there is no recipe for spekjes, and that absence tells the truth. Some foods entered a Dutch childhood not through the stove but through the paper zakje, the little bag from the snoepwinkel, sweet shop, carried home with sugar dust on your fingers and the grave expression of a child who has made a purchase.

The name already tells you the joke, not an etymology in need of a Latin ladder. Spek is bacon or pork fat; spekjes are little pieces of it. These pink-and-white sweets borrowed the butcher's word because they look like striped fat, soft and square, for obvious reasons entirely innocent of bacon. No province owns them the way Zeeland owns the bolus or Limburg owns vlaai. Their place is the sweet shop, which is a province of its own when you are eight.

But let me tell you a secret: the American marshmallow has made people think every such sweet is waiting for a campfire. Dutch spekjes are not waiting for anything. They belong in a bag of snoep, sweets, on a birthday table, in a Sinterklaas shoe, or beside a cup of coffee when the adults pretend they bought them for the children.

The method is simple, but exact. Bloom the gelatin properly, boil the sugar to 115C, whip until thick but still pourable, then let starch and icing sugar defend the surface from Dutch weather. Hou het altijd simpel, always keep it simple: one white layer, one pink layer, a night of patience. The sweet shop secret is mostly waiting.