my perfect speculaas biscuits
crisp, spiced biscuits with optional eggnog filling. October 2023
the christmas baking starts now!
I plan on doing twelve days of christmas baking, but distributed over the next few months (mostly to preserve my sugar intake and my neighbour’s sanity)
this is day one: speculaas!
these took about four revisions to get the right spice level and texture and I’m really pleased with where I landed! many thanks to my neighbours for being willing taste testers
they’re amazing plain with coffee, or dressed up as sandwich cookies with a little eggnog filling and a dusting of icing sugar
yields 25 cookies (or 12 sandwich cookies and 1 spare)
ingredients
cookies
50g butter, softened
80g brown sugar
zest of 1 orange
1-2 drops bitter almond aroma or almond extract
25g speculaas spice (I get mine from gewürzhaus)
100g plain flour
2 cracks of fine ground black pepper
1/8 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
2-4 tsp milk, as required
method
cream together the butter (50g) and brown sugar (80g)
beat in the orange zest (from one orange) and bitter almond (1-2 drops, if using)
in a separate bowl, sift together the speculaas spice (25g), flour (100g), baking soda (1/8 tsp), baking powder (1/2 tsp), and black pepper (2 cracks)
add the flour mixture to the creamed butter mixture and stir to combine. it will be a very, very dry dough.
add the milk (2-4 tsp) a spoon at a time until it comes together
cover and refrigerate at least 1 hour
preheat oven to 180°C
roll the dough out (use flour or baking paper so it doesn’t stick) to about 3mm thick
cut out your preferred shapes or use a speculaasplank if you are lucky enough to have one!
arrange on a lined baking tray. these can be fairly close together as they barely spread
bake for 10 minutes
they will crisp up as they cool
optionally, while baking make a 25% batch of smitten kitchen’s eggnog filling and sandwich cookies with a thin layer of filling between
stay tuned for day two!