Aug 27, 2026
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Stroopwafel Recipe and History
Learn how the Netherlands’ most iconic treat went from humble bakery to global obsession.
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Love Netherlands
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Dear Netherlands,
It’s easy to miss the thing that makes the Netherlands special. It isn’t the windmills or the tulips or the canals, though all of those are real and beautiful. It’s a particular kind of attention — the way a Dutch baker arranges the croissants, the way a Dutch cycle lane goes exactly where you need it, the way a brown café has the same four regulars in the same four seats for forty years. Pay attention to that, and you’ll start to love the Netherlands in a way most visitors never do.
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Photo: Andrew Crookston from San Francisco, CA, USA via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
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In today’s email:
- The Love Netherlands Guide № 001: Stroopwafel
- At The Café — Café Chris — The Oldest Brown Café in the Jordaan
- Around The Web — Edam Day Trip from Amsterdam: Cheese, Canals and Genuine Dutch Charm, Tracing Your North Holland Heritage: Archives, Records and Ancestral Towns, Maastricht, Netherlands: The Complete Visitor’s Guide (2026) + more
- From Love Netherlands — Rijksmuseum Amsterdam: Complete Visitor’s Guide (2026)
- Dutch Food You Will Love — Raw Herring — The Dutch Test
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The Love Netherlands Guide № 001: Stroopwafel
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A proper stroopwafel is built to sit on top of your hot drink for a minute or two — the rising steam softens the caramel syrup pressed between its two thin waffle layers until it turns gooey again. The cookie was born in Gouda in the late 18th or early 19th century, and one story credits a baker named Gerard Kamphuisen with selling the first ones using leftover crumbs and syrup. This is Guide № 001 in The Love Netherlands Guide series. Get the Full Collectible Guide (Free PDF) Stroopwafel — in a beautifully designed, printable booklet. The Love Netherlands Guide № 001. Download The Love Netherlands Guide № 001 (Free PDF) What a Stroopwafel Actually Is A stroopwafel is two wafer-thin rounds of baked dough sandwiched together with a layer of thick caramel syrup — stroop is the Dutch word for syrup, and wafel means waffle. The dough is made from flour, butter, brown sugar, yeast, milk and…
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Have you been there? Do you have a memory of this corner of the Netherlands? Hit reply and tell us — we’d love to hear your story.
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At The Café
Café Chris — The Oldest Brown Café in the Jordaan
Café Chris on the Bloemstraat opened in 1624 — making it, depending on whom you ask, the oldest continuously operating bar in Amsterdam. The bell-pull next to the urinal is still wired to the bar, so the bartender knows when to flush. The walls hold framed Ajax memorabilia from the 1970s, and the regulars are mostly Jordaan locals who have been coming since their fathers brought them in for the first jenever. It’s small, it’s loud on Saturday nights, and it’s one of the most authentic brown cafés left in the city.
👉 Visit the café
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Around The Web
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From Love Netherlands
The Rijksmuseum Amsterdam holds more than one million objects spanning eight centuries of Dutch history, art, and craftsmanship. Walk through its doors and you enter a building where Rembrandt’s Night Watch fills an entire wall, Vermeer’s light seems to glow from within the canvas, and the story of how a small trading nation shaped the modern world unfolds across 80 galleries. Love the Netherlands? Join our free newsletter for hidden Dutch gems…
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Photo via Love Netherlands
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Dutch Food You Will Love
Raw Herring — The Dutch Test
Every spring, a Dutch ritual unfolds on the streets of Amsterdam, The Hague, and Scheveningen. Herring stalls put out the year’s first catch — the Hollandse nieuwe — and locals queue to eat it raw, tipped back by the tail, sometimes on a soft white roll with onions. It tastes of the sea and of brine and, if you’re lucky, of nothing at all in the best possible way. Foreigners tend to grimace the first time. The Dutch laugh gently. “Three bites,” they say. “Then you love it forever.” They are usually right.
👉 Read the full story
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