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Zeeland.com

    It melts in your mouth

    Our Number One candy is the Zeeuwse boterbabbelaar – it’s our version of butterscotch. The name means ‘the buttery chatterbox of Zeeland’ which was because visitors took a long time to let it melt in their mouth, when offered them with a (second) cup of tea of coffee. The longer they stayed, the more they would ‘babbelen’ – chatter.

    Make your own

    Way back when, many a housewife would make babbelaars, toiling over the old granite worktop in the kitchen. The recipe: Heat up butter (‘boter’), sugar, glucose syrup, vinegar and water. While this is melting, rub butter on the worktop, then pour the mix onto it, somehow turning the mass over to cool. When it can be handled and is half-hard, roll it down to 1 cm thick. Before it hardens, cut up into mouth-size pieces. Curious how to make boterbabbelaars yourself? You read it here!
    Babbelaars zelf maken klederdracht

    A disappearing craft

    Some cooks made this their cottage industry, adding cacao, cinnamon and chipped peanuts and passing on their recipe, mother to daughter. Few people make their own babbelaars these days, but they still pop one in their mouth.

    In the can

    Some people, oftentimes merchants, make the candy for fêtes and folkloric events. You’ll find them in souvenir shops, usually in a blue tin decorated with people in traditional dress. And in old-fashioned sweetshops, such as Oma’s Snoepwinkel in Veere. Oma, you guessed, is Granny.