Antwerpse handjes: Antwerp's hand-shaped biscuit and chocolate

Overview

Antwerpse handjes — “little Antwerp hands” — are hand-shaped, and the hand is the point. The shape is the city’s own emblem, tied to the folk story that also explains the city’s name: a Roman soldier called Brabo is said to have killed a toll-exacting giant, Antigoon, cut off the giant’s hand and thrown it into the Scheldt — hand werpen, “hand-throwing”, supposedly giving Antwerpen. It is a good story and the etymology is almost certainly false; the name most likely comes from a plain word for raised land by a river. But the severed hand became the city’s symbol regardless, and you will see it on manhole covers and fountains long before you see it on a biscuit.

What is unusually well documented is the sweet itself. Most famous local foods have an origin lost in legend; this one has a date. In 1934 the city’s association of master pastry chefs ran a competition for a new Antwerp speciality, and it was won by Jos Hakker, a Jewish pastry chef who had come from Amsterdam decades earlier. His entry was a thin, buttery, almond-topped biscuit in the shape of the hand. So the “why here” is not a myth to be qualified — it is a matter of record, and a poignant one: Hakker was later deported during the occupation and survived.

There are really two things sold under the name, and confusing them is the first thing to get straight. The original is the biscuit — flat, pale gold, short and sandy, made from butter, sugar, egg, flour and flaked almonds, and nothing else. The younger cousin, from the 1980s, is a chocolate: a hand-shaped praline, most classically filled with almond marzipan and a note of the local herbal liqueur Elixir d’Anvers. Both are genuine, both are “handjes”, and they are not the same purchase. The name, recipe, shape and packaging of the biscuit are protected by the city’s confectioners, and the chocolate versions were later recognised as regional products by VLAM, the Flemish body for regional foods — which is as close to a legal “why here” as this sweet has.

What to order

Decide first whether you want the biscuit or the chocolate, because “een doosje handjes”, a little box of hands, could bring you either.

The biscuit is the one to know. Ask for Antwerpse handjes and, if it matters, de koekjes — the biscuits — to distinguish them from the chocolates. A good one is thin and brittle, deep gold at the edges, with slivered almonds pressed into the top and a clean, buttery snap. It is a plain, grown-up biscuit built for coffee, not a sugar hit. Bought loose and fresh from a bakery counter it is a different thing from the same biscuit six months into a sealed tin, though the tin is the classic gift and keeps for weeks.

The chocolate is de chocolade handjes or de pralines. The dark and milk versions are usually filled with marzipan carrying a hint of Elixir d’Anvers; a white-chocolate hand tends to hold a hazelnut praline instead. If you want the adult, distinctly-Antwerp version rather than a child’s sweet, the marzipan-and-liqueur filling is the one to ask for by name.

Between the two, the honest advice is that the biscuit is the local everyday object and the chocolate is the gift-shop flourish. Both are real; only one is something a resident might keep in the cupboard.

What to avoid

This is a shop purchase, not a plate, so the traps are a souvenir’s traps.

The commonest is a generic almond biscuit merely cut into a hand shape — thick, soft, uniformly brown, no slivered almonds on top. The real one is thin, pale and crisp, with the almonds visible and a sandy break; a spongy or cake-like “hand” is a different biscuit wearing the costume. Because the name and shape are protected, the genuine article carries a maker’s own branding on the tin or bag rather than an anonymous plastic sleeve — an unbranded loose “handje” at a station kiosk is the version to walk past.

Watch, too, for the shape sold without the substance: fridge magnets, marzipan novelties and chocolate lollies in the hand shape that trade on the emblem and have nothing of the biscuit about them. They are souvenirs of Antwerp, not of Antwerpse handjes.

And do not let a shop blur the two products to round up the bill. A bag of the biscuits and a box of the filled chocolates are priced in different worlds; being handed the chocolates when you asked for the biscuits, at the chocolates’ price, is the one sharp-practice worth guarding against.

Practicalities

These are bought, not ordered, and where you buy sets the price more than what you buy. A 150-gram bag of the loose biscuits runs roughly €5 to €9 at an ordinary bakery; the decorative tin — forty-odd biscuits, the standard present — is roughly €15 to €25. A box of the filled chocolates sits in the same €15 to €25 range for a modest box and climbs from there. A number well above that in a tourist-strip window is buying the location and the gift wrapping, not a better biscuit.

The natural pairing is coffee, mid-morning or mid-afternoon; the biscuit was built for it and is too plain to be a dessert on its own. There is no season, but there is a sensible split by purpose: buy the loose biscuits to eat now, from a bakery, as fresh as you can get them, and buy the tin only if it is travelling — its whole reason to exist is that it survives a suitcase, which the fresh biscuit in a paper bag will not.

You will find both the biscuits and the chocolates in ordinary bakeries and chocolate shops across the centre, not only in dedicated souvenir outlets, and the neighbourhood counter is usually the fairer price. Cards are fine everywhere, as they are across the city, so there is no need to carry cash for this.