A seasonal recipe, this, and typically Dutch. You can either go the whole hog and make the marzipan-filled version, or just make the
speculaas dough to make rich, spicy biscuits.
"Speculaas or speculoos is one of the Dutch culinary specialties. It is a spiced biscuit, made with wooden forms or moulds. They are typically winterfood, and especially associated with the feast of 'Sint Nicolaas' or Saint Nicholas, the original Santa Claus. This feast is celebrated on 5 or 6 December. Speculaas is very old, the spices used date from medieval times."
The recipe comes from the Coquinaria website, which gives some background information as well and from which the above information was extracted.
Note: This is a cake / biscuit recipe, but it also works very well if you serve it hot with ice cream as a dessert. It makes a fair amount, so plenty to allow the best of both worlds!
Ingredients for speculaas dough
500 gram (4 1/4 cups) simple white flour
250 gram (1 cup) cold butter
250 gram (1 1/4 cup) sugar
2 eggs, stirred
1/2 decilitre (1/4 cup) cream
salt to taste (don't forget this, and be liberal, otherwise your speculaas will taste bland)
50 to 60 gram (1/4 cup) spices for speculaas*
grated skin of 2 untreated lemons
200 gram (2 cups) flaked almonds, broken in to little pieces (optional)
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
*
This is a standard mix readily available in the Netherlands, but the website gives instructions for mixing it from scratch using powdered cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, white pepper, ginger and cardamom.
Ingredients for almond paste** [you can use ready-made marzipan if you want]
Ground almonds
Caster sugar
Icing sugar
Eggs
Almond essence
Vanilla essence
**
Use a standard recipe for almond paste / marzipan; depending on how deep a filling you want, use somewhere between 300g and 500g of ground almonds and proportion the other ingredients accordingly.
Method
Go to the Coquinaria website at
http://www.coquinaria.nl/english/recipes/speculaas.htm
