Food in Baroque art is rarely just decoration; painters used bread, oysters, fruit, wine, game, and imported luxuries to show wealth, technical mastery, and the fragility of earthly pleasure.
It is essentially a type of apple pie, but it has a few characteristics that make it uniquely Dutch, like a rich, cookie-like crust filled with a deliciously tart and spiced apple filling.
Pepernoten are eaten in the Netherlands when Sinterklaas and his Zwarte Pieten are coming to Holland to visit all the Dutch kids. His birthday, celebrated on the fifth day of December, is a huge holiday.
