Happy Holidays

Eelco and I wish you and yours a happy and safe holiday season!

To place holiday orders, please visit our on-line store by clicking here. (Please note that summer shipping rates are over. We can now ship Dutch Moon Cookies for just $3/box, or much less!)

We apologize for the long time in between blog posts; we have been very busy recently with our new addition to the Dutch Moon Cookies family!

Quintus Denton Keij was born on June 25, 2009, 5 pounds 15oz (2700gr), 20 1/2 inches (52 cm).

Shipping Costs & Delivery Time: Chocolate in the Summer

Dear customers,

We are thrilled that you love Dutch Moon Cookies! Unfortunately, storage and shipping of chocolate in warm weather is very complicated and expensive, so we have to raise our shipping rates during the summer to offset these costs. When chocolate goes above 72 degrees (22 Celsius) it is likely to melt, and also to bloom. The chocolate is still delicious and completely safe to eat, but does not look as nice. Also, Dutch Moon Cookies tend to stick together when they melt. (But if you follow the theory that cookies stuck to other cookies have no calories, perhaps this is a good thing!) Blooming is what happens to chocolate when sugar crystals on the surface react to humidity, giving the chocolate a cloudy look. This is most noticeable on our dark chocolate Dutch Moon Cookies. To prevent melting and bloom in warm weather, we need to ship Dutch Moon Cookies overnight, and with a cold pack, so this makes shipping more expensive, as the package is heavier and needs to be delivered quicker. Therefore, there is a flat rate of $25 for all shipments, up to 16 boxes.

Additionally, due to our strong commitment to quality control and safety, we also have more complex storage systems in the summer months. Therefore, your cookies may need to ship from another location and therefore may arrive to you later. We apologize for this inconvenience.

If you wish to order cookies while the weather is still above 72 degrees, in New York or your area, we recommend that you contact us first to let us know where you live, what type of boxes you wish to order, and how soon you need them: info-at-dutchmooncookies.com (replace -at- with @).

Be a guest cookie dipper this weekend!

Hi everyone! This is Tracey, Eelco's wife and Dutch Moon Cookies business partner. I am new to Twitter and I'm happy to see Eelco's blog here has been such a success! For my first post here, I would like to invite you to dip cookies with us this weekend, March 14th & 15th. Yes, we are bringing back our "guest dipper" opportunity. Here are some earlier photos of our customers dipping cookies:

Nelson Denis, lawyer, film maker, and former member of the New York State Assembly, takes on a new skill, dipping stroopwafels (Dutch caramel wafers) in white chocolate and coconut in the shape of a moon. (If you are interested in Nelson's film career, please check out this website and this blog. Please be advised that the blog is satire. Nelson is really
a very nice and polite guy.)

Tracey teaches Jimmy Dahroug of Long Island to dip stroopwafels in semi-sweet (dark) chocolate. Jimmy the time to schlep to our kitchen in Queens last year to learn the skill of moon-shaped cookie dipping. This year, we are renting kitchen space on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and we invite you to join us this weekend, see details below.

This weekend, March 14th & 15th, we are inviting our customers to be "guest dippers." You can stop by our kitchen on the Upper West Side on West 87th Street and learn to dip Dutch Moon Cookies with our specialized equipment. You can bring home your own complimentary box of cookies that you dip, or send them to a friend. If you were ever curious to see the fine details of chocolate production, here's your opportunity!

If you are interested, please let us know when you could stop by during the day this weekend either Sunday morning or Saturday. We'll teach you everything you need to know in about an hour. Please email or call me at tracey -at- dutchmooncookies.com (replace -at- with @), or 646-251-0680.

The kitchen is easily accessible by subway and bus. We kindly request that you do not drop by without checking in with us first, because we'll need to give you a few details on kitchen safety rules before you arrive.

We may not be able to accommodate everyone who wishes to be a guest dipper, so we will schedule people as they contact us.

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Dutch Moon Cookies - Click here to order online.

A bike ride to the supermarket

There are these faint memories you think of when you wake up and you're convinced it was all a dream - not much to bother with. Or even more likely, you wake up remembering absolutely nothing.

Luck or no luck, this didn't happen to be my case. As a matter of fact it was the first thought I woke up with: how would stroopwafels and chocolate go together? (The chocoholic I am I admit it's not hard for me these kind of things.)
Taking action, I slipped out of the bed, showered, ate breakfast and stepped onto my bike a few minutes later. I decided I'd go to the Lidl, a cheap grocery store, and buy some stroopwafels and chocolate to experiment with. Tourism detail: the Lidl is situated close to the Haagse Markt, a traditional outdoor market where people from all kinds of backgrounds meet and sell their stuff. It's a pleasure to be there although it didn't turn out to be the best place to learn Dutch, Tracey found out. Whenever she tried to buy something while speaking Dutch ("Hoeveel kosten deze tomaten?") the answer was always in English, no exception. Bummer!

So back home I started experimenting, putting melted chocolate (white/dark/milk) all on one side of the stroopwafel and then letting it sit in the fridge for a few minutes. Not much later it was confirmed that the very first test was a hit ... it was a go. Probably better that I didn't know I would do this same kind of experimenting for the whole 6 months after that ...

5 minutes to midnight - minutes with consequences

People keep asking, "how did you get the idea of starting a business with chocolate and stroopwafels?" First off, it wasn't something I had planned for. Yes, I was about to leave my job, my country, my family and friends in order to move in with my - then still - girlfriend in New York (not a punishment BTW!). But to say I was looking for an entrepreneurial adventure is an overstatement - in fact I was quite happy having found a temporary job with the UN, just before I would leave the Netherlands. It provided some sense of stability and acceptance I guess.

The last 6 months of my stay in the Netherlands (The Hague, to be precise) my girlfriend Tracey came and lived with me, as a matter of last-battle conditionality I had been able to impose. Truth is I didn't feel like schlepping to New York not knowing when, if I would get back to my country without having her experiencing what sinterklaas, appelstroop and gezelligheid all meant. We were lucky to live in this cute "Hofje", not far from the center of the center. How could I know that would be more space then we would be able to live in for the first three years in New York?

So one night in February '06, not too long before our final departure - it must have been a few minutes to midnight - a last thought crossed my mind before falling into a deep sleep: what would I miss most of my country, foodwise? Stroopwafels, I pondered, and chocolate - good chocolate. Funny, I thought, what would happen if you'd combine these two? That's when I fell asleep.

You have no idea how often I've cursed this last question, but there it was: the start of the Dutch Moon Cookies.

The first cookieblog!

OK, there we go. It's time for a twitter cookie blog, so why not start with a Dutch Moon Cookies blog? From here, we'll tell you how this sustainable cookie business started, why it started, what challenges we faced and what principles we stand for. Oh and yes, we'll try to give you a visual insight as well by posting pics.

Next blog: back to 2006.