Ketellapper baking tradition continues with new delicacy product line

‘Emperor of Friesland’ breakfast cakes

DELFSTRAHUIZEN, the Netherlands - Well-known former breakfast cake baker Joop Ketellap-per and his family have perfected a new line of de -luxe cakes. Upon the expiry of a five-year waiting period which Brabant-based Peijnenburg had negotiated when they purchased the Wieger Ketellapper (WK) bakery, the Ketellappers recently launched a new series of six made-to-order fruitcakes. The ‘Emperor of Friesland’ delicacies are available by mailorder.

The Ketellappers, Joop, his wife Tilly and daughter Jacqueline, the fourth generation in the business, perfected their recipes over the past few years in their modern, home-based bakery which overlooks the Frisian lake, Tjeukemeer. Many of ingredients of the cakes are anything but Frisian or Dutch: Chili raisins, Turkish apricots, Australian ginger and Thai pineapple. Hardly surprising, the Emperor creations easily are unparalleled in a province where previously price was a major factor when shopping for bakery products.

A century ago, the former peat colony of St. Johannesga had numbered many local bakers who all vied for business from the local community. The Ketellapper bakery took flight in the late 1920s when son Wieger convinced his father Johannes that the business with his entrepreneurship would be in safe hands. The second-generation local St. Johannesga baker peddled his products in the surrounding region while introducing factory production methods for his line of breakfast cakes, then already popular coffee-time snacks, particularly with labourers and farmers.

The WK line eventually included ginger and spiced cakes and by the 1960s were sold in most parts of the Netherlands as well as in the countries where Dutch immigrants had settled. Not surprisingly, the first ‘Em-peror of Friesland’ order already has made its way across the Atlantic Ocean.