Cookies are one of these things where correct measurements and ingredients are of the highest importance!

The attentive visitor of this blog might have noticed it already, but with the new layout of the blog, I added an extra page, solely dedicated to ingredient adaptations to the (top) navigation bar on this site.

But why should I adapt anything, Valerie?, you may ask. Shouldn’t people just be following your recipes to a T?
Well, yeah, sure, that’d be great. However. I live in the Netherlands. The readers of this blog live all over the world. Some ingredients have different names in different countries. Sometimes something just doesn’t exist and you need to replace an ingredient. And cup-measures are different from a cup you drink from, so if you don’t realize how I measure my ingredients, you might end up following the recipe to a T and ending up with rock-hard cookies. (Yes, I’ve heard that complaint before!)

Since I can’t come to every single kitchen and personally show you (Nonononono, baking soda is not baking powder. Nonononono, this calls for cilantro, not coriander seeds) I figured it’d be useful to pull all these notes and messages together and make a list. It’s a page in development. And it’ll probably always stay that way. I might divide the page up a little more, into categories and sub-pages, maybe add more sub-pages, who knows. But until I find the time for that, this is it. A fairy long list with translations, explanations and adaptations of ingredients used in my recipes.

The adaptations go from American to Dutch products (or vice versa) and any cuisine the original ingredient or dish is from, if I happen to know what that is. If I know that some other region uses something entirely differently, I’ll obviously add that too – again, provided I actually know it.

I hope my little (big) list is useful for any of you who struggle with old family recipes, foreign cookbooks, or blogs like mine.

And if you have any suggestions for items that should be included on the list, I strongly urge you to leave a comment or send me a message!

Thanks, and happy cooking!