Week 7 - Speculoos (page 48)

To skip my preamble and go straight to the food, click here.

To skip it all and head straight to the conclusion, click here.

Photos are sprinkled throughout - mobile users beware :)

Kristen is still injured, so her post is going to be up when she is cleared for rolling out dough and baking in general - in the mean time, you're stuck with just me ;)

The first time I ever had an authentic Speculoos cookie was when I was driving through Belgium on my way to Germany. Stopping for gas along the main highway, I popped up the stairs to stretch my legs and grab a coffee. Teeny little Biscoff cookies were in and amongst the sugars & coffee additions, so I grabbed a couple to try. Immediately the buttery cinnamon-y flavours filled me with nostalgia, and this forever became cemented as one of my favourite cookies.

Growing up, my mom would buy us windmill cookies to go in our lunches. The link has a variety with almonds (which my friend from Belgium says is authentic) but I remember them being without. Years later when I was able to drive myself to Trader Joe's in Washington state, I found Trader Joe's Cookie Butter which, while delicious, is no substitute for the real thing (I actually much prefer the cookie to the cookie butter, partly because I've never been able to figure out what to do with it aside from eat it with a spoon *grin*)

Let's get on with it, shall we?

Speculoos - The original recipe

These cookies were fun. I was a bit skeptical about the spices being sufficient to make a flavourful cookie, but it turns out that everything went well together. Honey, two different sugars, some cinnamon - nothing wrong here at all.

The recipe called for clover honey which I didn't have, so I used buckwheat honey instead and I really enjoyed the flavour. It also called for three different flours! Cake flour (lower protein than all purpose or bread flour), all purpose and whole wheat (which I ground myself). Fun!

Use the arrows to click through the gallery.

The dough out of the mixer was very similar to that of the last few shortbread-style recipes - crumbly. I wasn't super surprised at this, and remembered my last lessons from the previous weeks around bringing the dough together with the heat of my hands and some elbow grease.

As you can see in the second photo (use the arrows to click through) I tested the dough before dumping it onto my work surface to see how it would come together and it did.

Again, this recipe calls to turn the dough into a block, refrigerate, then roll out. Like last time, I chose to roll these babies out before chilling, because my momma didn't raise no fool.

These cookies are THIN. 'Slightly thinner than 1/8"' is what the directions are, so I rolled the dough to 1/8" and then used my decorative roller to roll the dough a bit more and then popped the sheets in the fridge.

Once the dough had been nicely chilled, I used an oval shape to cut out the cookies, then re-rolled the scraps to 1/8" and used a hexagon cutter to cookie-fy the rest of the dough.

The results were fantastic! The cookie is lovely and crisp, and not very sweet at all. I saved the decorating with powdered sugar until I was ready to photograph them and it adds a bit of sweetness but not too much - I'd make these again.

My observations & thoughts:

The cookie out of the oven was soft, but the next day it went crisp. I left them out on the counter for a few days and they gradually softened again as they staled.
Even stale, they were pretty tasty ;)
Using the embossed roller made these pretty, and it might be fun to paint some of the designs with a metallic paint for something fancy?
Next time I will add slivered almonds to the dough as my Belgian friend is insistent that this is missing.

A couple of photos of the final product:

I had a LOT of fun decorating these with my stencils:

And finally, it wouldn't be a JKBT post without a cookie stack:

TL;DR Conclusion:

These cookies are great! I would make them again.
They still need working to get the dough together but once cohesive it's a nice dough to work with.
Roll the dough out between parchment before chilling, like the other shortbread-style cookies in this book. Rolling chilled dough is a pain.

Thanks for reading! Week 8 is around the corner and we're tackling something that I have a love/hate relationship with ;)