Weespermoppen

Some towns announce themselves with towers, harbours, and municipal confidence. Weesp, sitting on the Vecht just east of Amsterdam, does something better: it gives you a cookie small enough to disappear in two bites and stubborn enough to carry the town's name for centuries. That is good manners. Also good strategy.

The name already tells you almost everything, if you let it. Weesper means from Weesp, and mop, before modern Dutch made it a joke, was also an old baking word for a small, solid cake or biscuit. So no, these are not jokes from Weesp, though the misunderstanding has kept generations of schoolchildren entertained. They are almond-paste rounds, rolled in sugar, baked until the edges bronze and the middle stays soft, the sort of thing a town sends into the world instead of a speech.

But let me tell you a secret. The Dutch coffee table has always been more ambitious than outsiders notice. Almonds do not grow in Noord-Holland; sugar was once dear; bitter almond is a perfume from the merchant cupboard. Yet here they are, made domestic, modest, and entirely at home beside a small cup of coffee. History and cookery, they cannot be separated, even when the history is wearing a sugar crust.

What I want from you is restraint. Use real amandelspijs, Dutch almond paste, not marzipan. Add the egg slowly, chill the roll until it behaves, and pull the cookies from the oven while the centres still look a little pale. Hou het altijd simpel. A Weespermop should be crisp at the rim, chewy at the heart, and quiet enough that you take a second before admitting the first one has gone.