People from Holland consider speculaas as Dutch as cheese, tulips and liquorice…
2013 updated version!
Like marzipan, speculaas (or speculaasjes as the individual cookies are called) is a cookie highly connected with the feast of Sinterklaas in Holland. The name speculaas has to do with the wooden molds the cookies are made in (we call it a speculaasplank, speculaas (sometimes also called speculoos) comes from the word speculum which means; mirror). One of the more famous shapes is a windmill of course!
Every year we are on a quest for the best spice and dough mix that will amount to the ultimate speculaas taste and texture. This fall, with the feast of Sinterklaas in site, we again blew new life into our speculaas project and after some more experimenting with dough and spices, we updated our recipe. Hope you will give it a try and like it too!
The speculaas spice mix before grinding
Ingredients for the speculaas spice mix
makes enough for 2-3 recipes of speculaas
6.5 g cinnamon
2 g ground cloves
1.5 g grated nutmeg
1 g ground white pepper
2 g aniseed powder
1 g ginger powder
1/2 g cardamom powder
You can also experiment with the spices of course by adding allspice or ground coriander seeds for example or using less or more of one of the ingredients, until you find your favorite blend. You can also buy sachets of ready made speculaas spices. But for the ultimate pleasure in smell and taste, you really must make your own! I started with a pestle and mortar but nowadays I use a cheap coffee mill for the grinding.
As for the soft brown sugar in the recipe. You can experiment with light, dark or muscovado sugar, they all have there own taste and can all be used. In Holland we have ‘witte, gele & donkere basterdsuiker’. We prefer the yellow (gele) version for this recipe.
Recipe for the speculaas dough
makes about 20 speculaasjes
225 g pastry flour / all purpose flour
115 g dairy butter at room temperature
130 g soft brown sugar
7 g / 2 tsps baking powder
3 g / 1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tbsps / 30 g buttermilk or milk
3 tsps / 7 g speculaas spices (see recipe above)
few pinches of salt
fine rice flour to dust the molds
a speculaas mold made of wood
Making the speculaas
Make the spice mixture in advance. Preheat the oven at 165ºC / 330ºF conventional oven. Sift the flour with the baking powder, baking soda, salt and spices. You can also leave out the baking soda, with it you will get a more brittle cookie, without it the cookie is more crunchy. Add the butter to the sugar and combine. Then add the buttermilk and beat until smooth. Add the flour mixture and quickly knead into a ball. If you are using almond extract you can add that to the milk. Press the ball into a disc shape, cover and rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. You can also make the dough a day in advance. This way all the ingredients really get a chance to blend. Just make sure your flour has a very low protein content, otherwise you might end up with a less crunchy cookie.
Take the dough out of the fridge. Sprinkle rice flour in the speculaas molds. Press an amount of dough in the speculaas shapes and cut away the excess dough with a very sharp knife. Tap the shapes out of the molds (this is NOT easy, esp. with new molds, they need a bit of help and maybe some light swearing) and place them on a baking tray. If you want you can add flaked almonds at this stage by pressing the underside of the cookie in the flakes and placing them, flakes side down, on the baking tray.
Bake in the oven for about 16-18 minutes, depending on your oven. All ovens are different so you may have to vary your baking times and oven temperature to get the best result. Keep a close eye on the speculaas during the later stage of the baking, because you don’t want your speculaas be too dark, (you will taste and smell it, burned sugar!). Take them out and leave the speculaas on the baking tray for a few minutes to firm up. Transfer them to cool on a rack.
The speculaas should be crunchy all the way through, from the edges to the center of the cookie. You will only know this for sure when they are completely cooled.
Tips for using your speculaas molds
- Be generous with the sprinkling of rice flour on your molds, especially when they are new
- Take extra care to flour the corners of the molds, for easier release from the molds
- Make sure your dough is as cold as possible but still pliable enough to fill the mold
- Make sure your knife for cutting away the excess dough is super sharp and cut with confidence and in one go
- Your knife should be level to the speculaas mold, held flat against the wood, when cutting away the excess dough
- Put dough back in the fridge for a while if it becomes too warm and soft
- If your speculaas will not be released by tapping, help it along with your fingers and/or with a blunt kitchen knife
- Gently brush excess flour from your speculaasje with a pastry brush
- The speculaasjes hold their shape better if you put them in the fridge before baking to firm up again
- Make sure your mold is dry and clean before storing it and cover it so it will not collect any dust
If you do not have a wooden speculaas mold, you can roll out the dough and make nice shapes with cookie cutters and decorate with almonds. Bake like the speculaasjes.
You can also make a speculaas pie, filled with (home made) almond paste (‘gevulde speculaas’). Check out our recipe for almond paste and our recipe for delicious speculaas pies filled with almond and cranberries.
you can also make smaller individual speculaas pies
Note: Some research done by me shows that there is a common root that binds speculaas spices to a British and an American variety. It comes close to something the Brits call ‘mixed spice’. This mixture also contains cinnamon and nutmeg and can contain a variety of extra spices like allspice (piment), ginger, cloves, coriander, caraway and cayenne pepper. The American ‘pumpkin pie spice’ also contains cinnamon and nutmeg, and usually ginger, cloves and sometimes allspice. So in conclusion they all have a base of cinnamon, followed by nutmeg, ginger and cloves and after that there’s some variation to be found. Interesting!
Also check out our collection of Dutch speculaas molds in our WKB bake shop.
Witolda Maruszewska says
These are sooooo good 🙂 I misplaced my recipe from the Belgian equivalent of the Women’s Institute that my mum (who is from Ghent) acquired from a friend, so I gave these ones a whirl – I ran across the recipe on your site while searching for bread recipes. Quite frankly they put my usual ones to shame…
I didn’t bother with shapes – simply made walnut-sized balls, put them on the baking sheet, flattened them and scored them with a fork. Worked well enough 🙂
For those of you in the UK btw, Chinese 5 spice powder works well as an alternative to mixed spice. It’s got anise, pepper, clove, cinnamon & fennel already in it, so all I needed to do was up the cinnamon, and add nutmeg, ginger and cardamom. The taste was just spot on 🙂
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Witolda,
Thank you for your wonderful feedback and addition. A great idea to use the 5 spice as a base for the spice mix for the speculaas / speculoos.
Happy Holiday baking!
Marieke
Agnes Hall says
Being Dutch myself, I must admit that I have never heard of pepper in the spice for speculaas.
Somehow, I am not sure whether I want to try it for my first go. Being the daughter and granddaughter of very good Bakers, i have never heard of them using pepper either.
I am willing to give it a try though, but what I liked most was the advice of the use of the moulds for the speculaas. Thank you very much. Once I made a batch, I will post a photo on this site.
Of course, my mum taught me to experiment with spices.
I lost my English exercise book, in which I had a lot of Recipes. That is why I am looking them up and go for the best one.
Thank you.
Agnes Hall
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Agnes,
There are almost as many versions and recipes as there are cookies. When in doubt I would suggest trying a version without pepper first or using very little. It all comes down to personal taste and also possibly wanting to come as close to the ones you remember from your childhood. Very sorry to hear you lost your recipes.
Wishing you lots of joy on your speculaas baking adventure and hope you will make our recipe your own.
greetings from Holland,
Marieke & Ed
Sheila Wylie says
We Brits do not call the mixture of spices ‘mixed spices’ for some strange reason it is just ‘mixed spice’ (some people confuse this with ‘allspice’ which of course, is not a mixture). Thanks for this recipe, I have just come back from Holland and had tried an individual ‘pie’ ( folded over, more like a pasty) it was so nice I had to look for a recipe.
Weekend Bakers says
Thanks, we have changed the recipe!
Hannah says
This post is fab! I keep coming back to it. My first few batches didn’t go too well, mainly because I took a few shortcuts, but I followed your instructions to the letter this time and the result was delicious 🙂
I was given some affordable cookie molds as a present, too – flowers and butterflies, which is kind of at odds with the Christmassy taste, but hey – it’s the middle of July and I’m impatient! The wierd thing is, they didn’t stick at all, even with the lightest dusting of rice flower.
With love from the UK 🙂
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Hannah,
Great feedback and glad to hear the recipe turned out so well. Never mind July, people in Holland eat speculaasjes all year round. We even eat them between a sandwich! Wonderful the molds did such a good job too.
Happy baking!
Marieke
Robyn says
Seasons greetings from New Zealand
I write to say thank you for the speculaas recipe you have developed. With no moulds, today I have used biscuit cutters, stars and christmas trees, in making a test bake. I love both the texture and the flavour. Over the years I have tried many recipes to try and duplicate the commercial ‘windmills’ but none have ever been satisfactory – let alone wonderful as these are. I will be making more as Christmas gifts. Thank you so much.
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Robin,
Great to hear. Thanks for trying out our recipe.
I just know the speculaasjes will be appreciated!
Happy Holiday baking!
Marieke
SaraHS says
I’ve been making speculaas for more than 20 years and I have never been quite satisfied with the recipes I have been able to find in American cookbooks and, more recently, on the internet. I came across your recipe today and gave it a try in preparation for our family’s (delayed) St. Nicholas party tomorrow. Converting the recipe was easy with a kitchen scale that measures both grams and ounces. I chilled the dough for about eight hours and found it easy to use with my wooden cookie molds — next year I am going to try dusting them with rice flour, but unbleached wheat flour works too. When my (Dutch) husband tried the finished cookies he said they are the best ones yet! I am still going to fiddle with the spice mixture but — Lekker! Thank you so much for sharing!
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Sara,
That sounds absolutely wonderful. Thank you! Fiddling with the spice mixture is part of the fun, until you get your personal favorite.
Maybe your husband can also give his approval for a piece of Dutch Kerstbrood / Kerststol: www.weekendbakery.com/posts…s-stollen/
And just maybe he recognizes these too: www.weekendbakery.com/posts…dos-kanos/
Best wishes from Holland and a very merry Christmas to you and your family,
Marieke & Ed
Rachel J says
Hi Marieke,
Thanks so much for the recipe. I bought a pair of biscuit molds in a bakery while on holiday in Bruges a few weeks ago, and wanted to make proper speculaas with them. My first batch tastes amazing, but some of my biscuits have spread a little while they were cooking, and are larger than others. Do you know why this might have happened? I want to get them perfect, because I’m planning to make them as Christmas presents for my family!
Thanks,
Rachel
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Rachel,
How nice, we absolutely love Bruges and visit it regularly. As for the speculaas I am afraid, as is often the case with baking, there can be a number of reasons for the spreading of cookies. Because you say some have spread I am guessing the main culprit is your oven. It could be that there are ‘hot spots’ that would explain some cookies setting alright and others being able to spread before they set. It could be an idea to turn your baking sheet after about 10 minutes of baking.
Next to that you could play a bit with the oven temp by adding 5 degrees for example. You can also look at your ingredients. The butter and sugar and the ratio between them play a big role in how the cookie turns out. If butter for example contains too much water it can cause more spreading. In any case it is important to measure your ingredients carefully.
You can also use a little less baking powder. And make sure when creaming the butter and sugar not to overdo it and beat in too much air.
And last point: the baking sheet you use should be a good solid one and not a silicon sheet, to get good heat transfer also from the bottom.
Make notes and change one thing at a time, so you know what makes the difference.
Good luck with it and happy baking!
Marieke
Carol Ross-Baumann says
Appelflappen looks yummy! Will give it a try- thanks!
Carol Ross-Baumann says
I tried three speculaas recipes this year and this one wins hands-down on taste and crispness. I also had a problem with the impressions from the boards losing their sharpness during baking, but think I’ll need to add more flour next time and that should solve the problem. My dough was a little soft and sticky after refrigeration- I think it should be stiffer and not sticky at all. I always keep everything cold, too, and rarely have problems releasing the cookie from the mold.
I have some Dutch heritage in my family so I think it’s very important to try to keep some of the food traditions going. I loved fiddling around with the spices, too. Normally I just follow the recipe, but you’re right about the pleasure of mixing your own- I had a delivery man ask me what smelled so good in my house while I was experimenting! Thanks for the recipe- it’s wonderful!
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Carol,
What a great thing to hear about you wanting to keep (Dutch) food traditions alive. Glad our recipe can be a little piece of that! Recipes almost always need a little adjustment because ingredients, equipment and hands are all different as you well know of course. It usually takes us a few turns to get it just right, but it’s all part of the baking and we always try to enjoy it all. And even if breads and cookies aren’t perfect to the eye, they are usually very edible and lots of times better and more fulfilling and rewarding (not even taking about healthier) than the store bought products.
Happy Baking and a very Happy New Year from Holland,
Ed & Marieke
PS: Another very Dutch baking suggestion: Appelflappen! www.weekendbakery.com/posts…ff-pastry/ They are almost everybodies favorite :O
Bianca Benn (@cakepopprincess) says
Wow, these are to die for! I just ate 4 in a row! I cheated and used a snowflake plunger cutter as I don’t have any Speculaas forms and they’re not easy to find here in the UK. So much simpler to get out, although not as authentic. Am going to invest in some more plunger cutters so I can make as Christmas gifts. Thanks ever so much for sharing the recipe.
Katka says
Hi,
I tried today with my wooden molds for biscuits. The taste is great, however, during the baking process, all speculaas poured out so they lost their nice shape completely. What did I do wrong?
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Katka,
First of all make sure the dough is cold enough when rolling it and after you molded the cookies you can again put them in the fridge for 30 minutes so when you put them in the hot oven they hopefully firm up before they get a chance to spread.
I would also suggest using a little less butter and/or a bit more flour than the recipe says if the spreading is very bad. Maybe it also has to do with the different (brand) ingredients you use, they can react differently. Butter for example can contain more or less water depending on the type and brand.
Hope you will get the perfect next time!
Marieke
Els says
sorry, i did not realize this was so long ago with my other reply. Do you use this recept also for pepernoten? or something else?
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Els,
You can use it for kruidnoten too but my favorite is speculaas filled with almond paste!
Peter Dekkers says
Hi/hallo there!
What an excellent recipe. My grandfather, grandmother and father were bakers in Antwerp up until the 1980s, and I inherited a collection of large speculaas moulds from them, in the shape of old men and women with crooked nosed and hump backs – this was traditional around carnival time. Here are my experiences cutting the speculaas dough:
– First off, rice flour is completely indispensable 🙂
– I found knives for cutting really, really hard. And then I remembered something I’d seen my grandfather do: he used wire to cut the excess dough! It works a treat. I ended up using some fishing wire (nylon). Perfect cuts every time.
– When the excess dough is removed, I found rubbing gently inwards at the edges of the mould, in order to loosen the dough, worked really well.
Ahhh. Thank you so much! And now… time for speculaas.
Groetjes,
Peter
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Peter,
Thank you so much for sharing. I just love your tips, especially the one about the wire and I am going to bake an extra batch of speculaas because I cannot wait to try it myself.
My grandfather also was a baker and he had a ‘speculaasmachientje’ with a handle that you had to turn (something like this I think: zoom.nl/foto/…ct_id=8996. I have never seen it but my mother recalls it worked perfectly.
Jealous (in a good way :)) of your original molds, the ones you can buy in the shops now are far from perfect, most are too shallow and probably only good to be used as decoration. The ones we use are not perfect either, but they work with probably more than average use of rice flour and a bit of light swearing.
Enjoy your speculaas and the baking!
Marieke
Peter Dekkers says
Hi Marieke,
Oh, that ‘speculaasmachientje’ looks like the ticket for enormous amounts of baking pleasure! I’d never seen that.
I hope the wire cutting works well for you too. Just pull it reasonably tightly against the wood and gently go from side to side as you’re cutting, I found that worked great.
Cheers!
Peter
Weekend Bakers says
Thanks Peter!
This weekend a (fishing enthusiast) friend will bring different kinds of wire with him so we ca try it out. Really happy with this tip 🙂
Marieke
PS: Acting on a tip from another comment I also made a trial batch speculaas dough with fine spelt flour (spelt bloem) and I am really pleased with the end result (just made cookie cutter shapes, not yet with the molds)
laura says
Altough I was born in Mexico and have lived here all my life, my grandparents lwere dutch but eft Holland during WWII, traditions from that country have been part of my life, and spekulaas one of them. Last year my husband, who loves to cook ,”googled” the cookie recipie, we tried using a traditional spekulaas mold that was a wedding present for my parents more than 40 years ago, but it was too slow. We ended using christmas cookie cutters, but the flavor was great, my kids loved them (it is the first time they tried them) and we have given them as a homemade present to friends, who have enjoyed them. I was wondering if there is a site or a store in the US where I can get a spekulass mold to make bigger cookies, I saw one in the shape of St. Nick, that I loved and would love to get one. Thanks for the recipie.
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Laura,
It is amazing how many connections there are between Dutch people and people from Dutch ancestry abroad. Also with words like cookie and waffle and words connected with traditions like Santa Claus from our Sinterklaas. Sort of nice to know we made a little mark, especially with food and baking for we do not have an impressive food culture in Holland. But everybody seems to like speculaas and it is wonderful to imagine people all over the world baking it during the festive season.
As for the molds, have you seen the two suggestions with links for sites that sell molds in the US at the bottom of the recipe?
Cookie Mold
&
House on the hill
Hope one of them has what you are looking for.
Happy holidays and happy baking!
Marieke
Elizabeth says
Hi everyone,
I lived in Amsterdam from 1976 to 1993 and every year Saskia offered her spekulaas on our bus trips to Utrecht.I played inthe NEDPHO.
I have a batch in the fridge(using an egg to cream the sugar-didn’t really come out well last time) waiting to go into the oven. I intended to try a few recipes so look forward to making a more genuine spekulaas without egg and a few more accurately weighed spices.The letter scale is a good idea. I have an old one. It will be a bit fiddly as I have to clip a celophane bag of spice on each time.Very nice to read letters(in dutch) from such enthusiastic bakers(English bakers letters also nice!!!)
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Elizabeth,
Thank you for your lovely addition to this speculaas topic. No egg needed for the recipe as you can see. Hope the weighing of the spices goes to plan and you end up with a wonderful fragrant mixture.
Happy baking and happy holidays,
Marieke
Mooglosaurus says
Hello, this message just to tell you I have found your recipe and absolutely love it!
I translated it in French on my blog mooglosaurus.blogspot.com/2011/…os-20.html
Hope this is ok 🙂
Thanks for this recipe!!
Weekend Bakers says
Allo Mooglo,
Yes I am Dutch and I also love my speculaas with hot cocoa. Thanks for liking the recipe and hope more French and Belgo-Français people will try it and like it too.
Happy baking,
Marieke
JP says
Thanks again Marieke! I definitely understand about the spices – and although mine aren’t outdated, they definitely wouldn’t be nearly as good as fresh ground! I will let you know how the latest batch comes out following the directions the correct way and after the holidays pass by I’ll probably play with the recipe to see how I can get more of spicy kick.
Happy Holidays,
JP
Marieke says
Hi JP,
Yes, here in Holland, raw cane sugar (ruwe rietsuiker) is the brownish-yellow sugar with bigger granules (and more taste then the refined white sugar). I think we are on the same page, but I have never heard of turbinado I have to say.
About the spices. The spices we use usually are organic and we make sure they are as fresh as possible (you wouldn’t believe the old tins people have laying around, way past their date and with very little taste left in them..and still using it). We grind and pound spices like cloves and nutmeg ourselves. This in itself gives more taste, so maybe, for this reason,we are a bit ‘conservative’ with the amounts of our spices. My first suggestion would be to add a little bit more of the whole mixture. And you can also play with it, depending on personal taste, adding a bit more ginger for an extra kick or more aniseed for sweetness etcetera. There are also other spices like mace and cardamom that you can add. To make a long story short: lots of trial runs to get that perfect speculaasje! Let me know if you have found the one you love best, so I can try it out too!
Have fun with the baking,
Marieke
JP says
To the poster above who posted the U.S. conversions: please don’t take it personally, but your math is way off! For example, 250 grams of wheat flour is more like 2 cups and change and 50 grams of raw cane sugar is more like 1/4 cup and a tsp. It looks like you may have just done a straight gram to cup conversion which is never accurate because of the density of ingredients.
I would recommend using this website if you don’t have a way of weighing as they provide conversions for common ingredients: www.gourmetsleuth.com/gram_calc.htm
Of course, there’s no substitute for just weighing!
Made more of this dough tonight: by hand is definitely the trick.
JP says
Great thank you very much! I am looking forward to giving these another shot.
When I did my first run, I did not do the rest and refrigerate – I went straight to molds. I found the dough pretty easy to work with overall.
The thing I learned quick though was my over must run hot, so it burnt the cookies a bit. Also, a general tip to readers is not to mix different molds on the same sheet and cooking cycle because every cookie will different in baking time.
Couple of additional questions:
1) By raw sugar – you mean like turbinado – the big granules of raw cane sugar?
2) The flavor of these cookies overall is great! Personal preference – I’d like even a little more spice to come through. Do you have any suggestions on if I should increase a certain spice in the spice mix, or just use a tad more in making the dough?
Thanks again!
Kitchen Butterflly says
Aah…see I never knew Tarwe bloem was the light brown flour, I always assumed it was the same as volkoren. Anyhow, this time I didn’t make the speculaas but the Sinterklaas fest was prima. Gezelligheid at its peak!
Marieke says
Hi Butterfly,
What I meant by wheat flour is what we call ‘tarwebloem’ in Holland. It’s sort of a light brown version of the ‘volkoren’. But you can also use ‘patentbloem’ which is very fine white flour.
I use the ‘tarwebloem’ from the mill because it has more taste and also more fibre than the patentbloem. But as I said, both will do the job.
Hope it turns out great,
Marieke
Kitchen Butterflly says
Hi Marieke…one more q please. Is the wheat flour – patent bloem or volkoren? Plan is to make the speculaas tomorrow before the fest! Prettige Sinterklaas
Marieke says
Hi Butterfly,
You are going to have so much fun with your speculaas, spijs and boterstaaf!
These items are definitely among the most treasured culinary traditions we Dutch people have.
Have a great Sinterklaasfeest!
Marieke