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.
Kelly Archer says
Hi there. I made these and everyone (including me) absolutely LOVE your amazing recipe. I didn’t have aniseed so I used fennel seeds instead and I don’t know if it’s much different but I’m sure it’s quite similar. I shared with many friends and family and have a new batch in the fridge now cooling/resting to take to church tomorrow (maybe 😏).
I just have to ask, the almond pie in the picture, do you have a recipe for it? I’m drooling over it and I just want to know how to make it!
Thanks again for sharing the secret spice that you’ve mastered along with the easiest cookie recipe ever.
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Kelly,
So very great to read you are having fun and success with our speculaas recipe. Fennel seeds are indeed a great alternative to use.
I do not have the exact recipe for the pie in the picture (made it with leftover dough and spice at one point) but you can use this recipe:
www.weekendbakery.com/posts…laas-pies/
Just leave out the added cranberry compote and try the pies or use have the ingredients from this recipe for the dough but all the almond paste (all 150 grams) and make one pie in a mold of around 20 cm. You can decide for yourself the thickness of the layer of almond paste to adjust to your taste. The baking time for this pie would be around 30 minutes.
Wishing you the best time baking more speculaas and speculaas inspired recipes.
Greetings from Holland,
Marieke
William Butler says
New baking experience for me ,thanks
Gary van Rijswijk says
Use cold butter cut up and mix with flour sugar and spices and knead quickly till you have a pliable dough you can add up to 2tbs of milk during this proces. The dough should not be sticky. Wrap in foil and into the fridge. Let the flavours blend over a few days. It will be much better. I like to roll it out into a 1cm thick slab and bake that into one big round. Wrap it in foil and let it cure at room temperature for a few days. It can be broken in pieces and stored in an airtight container. This is not brittle but firm and a bit moist in the middle. Never lasts long in my household. The spice mixture is cinnamon nutmeg.anisseed.cloves. pepper mainly plus any additions you like. Make sure you use the right cinnamon and not ground cassia which is darker and a very poor substitute sold as cinnamon.
Colette says
Excellent recipe – thank you!!! No changes made or needed to any of the recipe or spices.
Caitlin says
Lovely recipe 🙂
We’ve been searching for a recipe to bake for my gran who lived in Holland for a lot of her life. This is the most accurate one we have found, thank you!
joyce h vandegriend says
could you kindly have the measurements in cups, teaspoons, tablespoons for wet & dry ingredients in Grams here?
bedaankt!
jana
patti says
Hello thank you for the speculaas recipe. I have a question I tried making the recipe a couple of times and found it very spicy how can I make it not so spicy please. Thank you, Patti.
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Patti,
That is very easy, just use halve of the indicated spices or try one teaspoon to start with and see how you like this. Any amount you personally like is good of course.
Tere Van Diest says
Greetings Weekend Bakery.
I finally invested in a mold; found at a Dutch store (Vander Veen’s) here in the “states”.
I’m eager to make these delicious cookies. I first had one of these in the ’60’s and love them; such delicious spices. I’ll be baking holiday cookies with my young grandchildren this year. I’ve never made these cookies. I’m going to make a first batch soon so I’ll be better prepared to make these with the children. As always thanks for authentic recipes and baking methods. And most especially actual information on how to use my mold.
Kindest regards to you all.
Tere
Weekend Bakers says
Hope they will be wonderful. We Dutch people are so fond our ‘speculaasjes’ we eat them almost all year round, but during the months toward Sinterklaas and Christmas the stores are super full with all kinds of variations on the speculaas theme.
On of my favorite recipes, using the spices, is this one:
www.weekendbakery.com/posts…laas-pies/
Enjoy your baking and thank you for trying and liking so many of our recipes!
Greetings / Groetjes,
Marieke
Jer says
When adding butter to sugar, do you cream it or just use a whisk to mix? Thank you.
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Jer,
We combine it with a dough whisk for 30 seconds or so, then add the buttermilk and beat well for a minute so it gets smooth and light. After that it is very easy to incorporate the flour. The most important thing is to get a smooth piece of dough without having to work it too much (to avoid gluten-development and get a crunchy cookie).
Hope they will be delicious!
Lily says
Delighted to see your recipe gets comments and questions every year! Making the first of many batches today, it’s the best recipe. Thank you and Merry Christmas!
Weekend Bakers says
Thank you so much Lily, we will never get enough of speculaas and frankly here in Holland we do eat it (almost) throughout the year 🙂
Don’t know if you have seen it but we have posted a new recipe fro bread that has speculaas spices added to the dough.
www.weekendbakery.com/posts…-favorite/
It is truly very delicious and also a great (healthy) alternative to very rich and filling other Christmas bakes like stollen.
Wishing you a very Merry Christmas too!
Ed & Marieke
Lily says
Lovely, thank you!
Alisa Cohen says
Ik heb deze speculaasjes al een paar keer gemaakt, en hoewel de smaak prima is, kan ik de relief maar niet behouden. De laatste keer heb ik het bakblik met de ongebakken koekjes een poos in de koelkast gezet vóór het bakken, maar het relief verdwijnt in de oven, zogauw ze warm worden en bakken. Ik heb ook minder vocht toegvoegd, en gebruik “Europese boter.” Enig idee hoe ik die leuke plaatjes van het plankje kan behouden?
Weekend Bakers says
Hallo Alisa,
We snappen wat je bedoelt, het is een beetje zoeken naar het evenwicht tussen het lekkerste en mooiste speculaasje. Door het verminderen of zelf weglaten van bakpoeder en soda krijg je een beter reliëf. Ook het verminderen van de hoeveelheid boter kan helpen. Maar het kan zijn dat daardoor de bite en brosheid van het koekje weer wat minder wordt. Ook de diepte van de speculaasplank speelt een rol, een diepere plank geeft een beter resultaat. Ook kun je kijken of het verschil voor je maakt als je het deeg een nacht in de koelkast legt (en da even doorkneedt voor gebruik) ten opzichte van een uurtje in de koelkast.
Hopelijk heb je hier wat aan. Veel plezier met bakken en uitdelen!
Diane says
Thanks for the recipe!
Have you tried ammonium carbonate (Baker’s ammonia/hartshorn) instead of baking powder? Probably not 1:1 ratio. Maybe 1/4 t or 1/8 t. I would think the cookies would be crunchier using it? I’ve found many of the old recipes have a completely different texture when you use it instead of modern baking powder. But of course, the dough cannot be eaten raw.
I’ve been trying to find Belgian cassonade brown sugar in the US with no success thus far. It’s made differently than our US brown sugar is made. I found some candi-sugar for making beer, so I’m going to give that a try soon.
I’ve been using sifted cornstarch in my wooden molds. Also sifted powdered sugar. Both work pretty well.
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Diane,
No we have not tried this. It is traditionally used, also in Germany to make all kinds of festive bakes like ‘Lebkuchen’ and in Holland ‘Pepernoten’ but not many people use it anymore. It is hard to come by and the ammonia smell before baking is not too pleasant of course. But as we understand it, the consistency of most bakes with hartshorn are more soft than crunchy.
In Holland we do not use the cassonade name, but we assume it is very much the same as our soft brown ‘basterdsuiker’ or soft brown sugar. As an alternative (but we have never tried this we must say) you could use a combination of sugar and molasses. (Also see this wiki page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_sugar)
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and tips. Hope the cookies will be great and enjoy your baking and experimenting!
Greetings from the Low Countries,
Ed & Marieke
Sanne says
“… most bakes with hartshorn (baker’s ammonia) are more soft than crunchy”
Hartshorn (baker’s ammonia) makes cookies and crackers more crunchy. . .
Weekend Bakers says
In most products we know, like ‘pepernoten’ and ‘eierkoeken’, that have a soft consistency, the hartshorn is (or was) added to give more airiness because at high temperatures the chemical reaction produces carbon dioxide and ammonia gas which creates air bubbles in the product. It is an ancient baking powder from the days they did not understand the chemical properties but still found out it worked as leaven. Crunchiness is more a result of other ingredients in a recipe like the right combination of sugar and butter.
Liz says
I tried this recipe twice side by side. The first one I followed it to a tee. The second one, I use Ammonia and omitted both baking soda and baking powder.
The result is….. Ammonia is snappier, and overall just tasted better.
If the Op is still reading this thread, stick to Ammonia. It’s a HUGE difference that I won’t even realize until I tried it side by side. Thanks for the idea!
Weekend Bakers says
Thank you Liz, sounds like we have to try and find some ammonia too.
Tere Van Diest says
Hello. If using the ammonia how did you modify the recipe? 10 g or 2 1/2 tsp of ammonia??
This ingredient is very easy to find here in the U.S.
I may give it a try.
Weekend Bakers says
Hope you can figure it out Tere, we have never tried it with the speculaas!
Vicky says
Having lived with a dutch friend I love many of the delicious things created by the people of the NL. Speculaas are my all time favourite. This recipe gave the perfect texture of crisp biscuit. I used black pepper and fennel seed (as it’s what I had on hand), the flavour was a tiny bit bitter, which might have been due to the substitutions.
I’ll definitely be using this again!
Weekend Bakers says
Yes Vicky,
if you try it with the suggested spices it will be even better. Thank you for trying and liking it already!
Groetjes uit Holland,
Marieke & Ed
Suzie Lee says
Thank you for this wonderful recipe!! I love these little cookies!!
Weekend Bakers says
We the people of the low countries could not agree more 🙂
Conchita says
Hi, i made the specula’s and they came out really good. I did not use baking powder, only baking soda, but I want to try to make them a little crispier, would you suggest to augment the baking soda, or use a different type of flour? In the original recipe of Dandy, they say they use farine légerè non fermentante, do you know which kind of flour is this?
Conchita says
Correction, it’s not Dandy, is Dandoy. 😉
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Conchita,
Great to read your comment. We would encourage you to use the combination of baking powder and soda for a light and crispy texture and not too much soda because it can affect the taste. As for the flour / farine it best thing to look for is a low protein pastry flour. With our limited knowledge of the French language we would guess that the farine légerè you mention would be about the right type.
Enjoy your speculaas / speculoos baking!
Conchita says
Thank you so much for answering me, your recipes are really great, keep up with your great work. <3
Weekend Bakers says
Glad we could help Conchita 🙂
Alex says
My first ever attempt at this and it was a roaring success. Just had to reduce the baking powder and ommited the baking soda (after I read the comments). Will make it again.
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Alex,
Great to read your comment and glad it turned out so well. Here in Holland we eat speculaasjes all year round, not only during the festive season. We just love them. You can try different versions, also play with the amounts of baking powder, until you get it just right for your needs.
Enjoy your baking in 2019!
Alex says
Hi it is your recipe that is the winner. Want to ask, where can I find a smaller mold? Currently I have a rooster and windmill one (approx 5cm long each) but would like to make half the size ones for coffee. Once again thank you for a great blog and recipes
Weekend Bakers says
Hi again Alex,
Ohh, that is a challenge. If you look at the molds here, you can see they are all even larger rather than smaller: www.weekendbakery.com/websh…tter-molds
If you want halve size ones for coffee we would think a solution could be to just use a small cookie cutter. Here in Holland we would not consider your rooster and windmill of 5 cm long, but just the right size for a ‘speculaasje bij de koffie’ 🙂
Thank you for your kind words and happy speculaas baking and sharing!
Maria Augustyniak says
I’m having trouble getting the text (Merry Christmas) of my mold to show. Even when I press firmly in that area. I have also put extra dough in that area thinking that it is deeper there. The image (bells) show up much better.
Also, after baking the cookies, they have risen to the point where the image is less distinct.
I do keep the dough cold and handle it sparingly.
Any tips to get sharper detail?!
Thanks,
Maria
distorted.
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Maria,
Yes, we do. Here are things you can try. Make sure the dough is pliable yet cool and a bit on the dry side. Also put the cookies in the fridge for 30 minutes before baking. Use less or even no baking powder in the recipe and experiment with a little less butter and more sugar. You can start out on a higher oven temperature, then temper it after a while. You can also see if the place / tier in the oven makes a difference. The thing is, there is tension between the recipe that delivers the most delicious and the most beautiful cookies with sharper image. If you leave out the baking powder you get a cookie that is less ‘brittle’ and more dense, so less pleasant to eat in our opinion. So, it’s a choice in that way too.
Hope you can give it some more tries and get that perfect cookie!
Simon Templar says
Being Belgian, and having lived in the US for over 20 years, I’ve been trying to bake speculaas for the longest time, especially around St Nicolas Day (December 6th). I’ve tried every recipe in existence, even the ones that came with the speculaas molds I bought in Brugge. None of them worked. Until I found yours. It’s perfection!!!! I did add an extra tablespoon of the speculaas spices to the dough, and that made it even better. Thank you so much!!!
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Simon,
Your comment brings a smile to our faces of course. An extra tablespoon of spices for a very intense flavor indeed :). So glad our recipe could be a part of your holiday baking happiness!
Enjoy with family and friends.
Greetings from Holland,
Ed & Marieke
Holly says
Thanks!
Holly says
Do you think I could use a Springerle rolling pin with this recipe? Thanks.
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Holly,
We do not have personal experience with this kind of rolling pin, but it could work. Maybe you need to make a slight change to the recipe by adding a little bit less liquid or also less baking powder and soda, to get imprints that hold their definition better.
Pat Howell says
I have just ordered a wooden Sinterklaus mold and had planned to use it with the lebkuchen dough I make every Christmas, but in researching it have discovered that speculaas dough works much better for imprinting. Have you ever used lebkuchen dough for molded cookies?
Your speculaas recipe and instructions are wonderful, very precise and I am going to try making them.
Thank you!
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Pat,
Yes, you are right. If you look up images for lebkuchen you will see all shapes and sizes, but as far as we know not many with imprints. There are many varieties of course and depending on the recipe and ingredients, lebkuchen can almost be cake-like, while speculaas is much more a crunchy cookie. The types we have encountered in modern day Germany are mostly thick kuchen in the shape of a heart or tree. But there can also be versions we do not know about that would be perfect for a mold.
So, we cannot tell you much about lebkuchen based on our own baking experience, but we do know you are going to love the speculaas 🙂
Enjoy your holiday baking!
Carol Jeske says
Ann Watson wrote a book on molded cookies which included Lebkuchen.
Johanna says
Instead of a knife I use piece of dental floss to cut the speculaasjes from the rest of the dough. Works a dream.
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Johanna,
Thank you for this tip! We have never tried it with floss, but we are going to do so soon!
Geoff Cooper says
Hi, I make these each year, for Christmas and will do so again, now that I have bought your Speculaas molds. But I was recently in a Dutch shop in Canada where I bought some speculaas that had no spices in them, they were just very buttery. Would this recipe, without the spices work for that, and give a lovely buttery taste. I have looked around for a specific recipe for such a biscuit but haven’t found one.
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Geoff,
Great to read your comment! Sorry for the late reply. It is no problem at all to make the speculaas without the speculaas spices, it will still be a very good and indeed buttery cookie. You will taste the butter better, because speculaas spices are very intense of course. We also play around with it some times. Making cookies with just a hint of spices or with lemon zest or a drop of almond extract.
Hope you will enjoy your speculaas baking very much, with or without the actual spices!
Greetings from Holland, land of Speculaas & Sinterklaas
Ed & Marieke
Weekend Bakers
Tori says
Hello Geoff Cooper…. Sounds like you’re taking about short bread. A traditional English cookie of sorts. Made a Christmas, very buttery. Mostly butter, sugar flour for ingredients. Try looking up a recipe for short bread.
Amy says
Hi, if I’m using whole spices to ground them into powder, would you suggest toasting them first? If you suggest toasting them, won’t the spices lose their flavor faster? Thanks.
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Amy,
We can say for our cookies and speculaas, when we make our own spice blend, we never roast any of the spices. We do not know from experience what would happen if you did. If you want to try it you must always toast them whole, before grinding, otherwise the powder will burn very quickly.
The spices, not-toasted, are very intense, but that is the intention of this cookie. It is said that toasting is done for easier grinding when the spices are a bit damp and that they can lose essential oils in the process. So it really is not necessary to toast for this recipe, but of course you can experiment with it to see what happens.
Kate Thompson says
Hello, Everything you show looks good and I appreciate your helpful recipes and tips. However, I cannot find the rec pie for the speculation pie you show, the whole one, not the individual ones. Is there a link for that recipe, or use instructions for it to adapt the smaller pies one to one bigger one? Thank you for your help and great website!
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Kate,
We do not have the recipe for the pie you see in the picture on our website, only the smaller pies. Put I can hopefully help you with these directions:
Take one recipe for speculaas dough as described above. Take around 150 to 175 grams of almond paste (see directions here www.weekendbakery.com/posts…ond-paste/). Cover the base of a round pie dish (approx 19 to 20 cm in diameter) with halve of the speculaas dough. Add the layer of almond paste and cover with the second halve of the speculaas dough. Brush top with some egg wash. Bake in a preheated oven at 170ºC / 340ºF for about 35 minutes.
Happy baking and eating!
Benny says
Spices for speculaas
Take cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, white pepper, ginger and cardamom (everything powdered) in a ratio of 8:2:2:1:1:1 (whether you use grams, teaspoons or tablespoons, the proportions must be the same).
coquinaria.nl/en/du…aaskruiden:
Merry Christmas !
Weekend Bakers says
Thank you Benny, for your version of the spices.
Happy New Year!
Marcos says
Heya Bakers,
I think that I took the earlier 201X’s recipe and, this year, I needed to check some info and… I didn’t know that this quest is updated — I realy liked this project :D! (Do you still have the other speculaas recipes?)
But, the real reason I’m writting is: I’m from Brazil, and here we don’t have brown sugar — I learned, a few days ago how to do it — but, what is this ‘witte, gele & donkere basterdsuiker’? (more specific the ‘gele sugar’? is it a citric sugar? [https://www.libelle-lekker.be/ingredienten/producten/215/suiker] and do you know a way that I can do it by myself?)
Thanks (a lot) for the recipe an for this amazing quest!
Marcos
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Marcos,
Thank you very much. Don’t know if you have seen this recipe already: www.weekendbakery.com/posts…nd-orange/
The recipe on this page is the only other original version.
Gele basterdsuiker has a slight caramel taste. It is made by mixing caster sugar with inverted sugar (mix of glucose and fructose) and a caramel solution. We have never made it ourselves and do not know the exact way to do it. If you can find muscovado sugar you could try and use that.
Good luck with it and above all enjoy your baking!
Pam says
Hi Weekend Baker
I have made this recipe twice already with huge success. Thank you. They disappear way too quickly after baking so there is no problem with storage. I am planning to make them to give away at Christmas.
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Pam,
Thank you so much for sharing.
Because of cold and rain way to early this year, we already started with baking the speculaasjes ourselves. The air heavy with aromatic spices, we love it so much, makes you warm and everybody seems to love them (we even put them on a sandwich here in Holland can you believe that!)
Enjoy your Christmas baking,
Marieke & Ed
Anne Vanderlaan says
Hi I have a question. In Holland when I lived there, they did not have brown sugar like in the states. It was different and so I have searched online to find out what the difference is.
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Anne,
The sugar we use is the ‘gele basterdsuiker’ and as far as we know should come close to the lighter brown muscovado type sugar.
Groetjes uit Holland
Elaine says
Hello there
will your Recipe for the speculaas dough be suitable for South Africa – would love to try them
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Elaine,
Of course that would be no problem at all. The ingredients are also easy to come by I would expect and the only challenge would maybe be the temperature, so choose a cool day / cooler room and use the fridge when needed.
Wishing you happy baking / Baie bakplezier from Holland,
Marieke
Teresa Teague says
Hello again friends,
What is the shelf life of these delectable cookies. I’ve made them several times and of course they don’t last long, but I need to know if they will keep for a few weeks if kept in an airtight container.
Thank you so much for this wonderful recipe.
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Teresa,
Thank you! It depends a bit on how far you bake them. The less moisture there is in a cookie, the better they keep. Store bought cookies are usually very crisp and brittle and you can keep them for weeks and weeks. But we find, when we bake our own, also because of the fresh butter we use, that it is best to store them in the freezer, if you want to keep them longer than a few days. Just get them out 30 minutes in advance, this way they will taste better than the container version.
Laura says
Hi there!
Is there a substitute for the aniseed powder? I can not seem to find it in aus.
Thanks
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Laura,
If you also cannot find aniseed (you could grind this to a powder) we would suggest using fennel seed or star anise or caraway seed as a third option.
Happy holiday baking!
Lily says
I have been making your speculaas recipe for a few years now. It is fantastic and foolproof. Thank you from me and all my friends and family that got to try them 😉 I’ll be spending Christmas in Amsterdam this year, first time in The Netherlands. Looking forward to sampling speculaas all over town! Happy holidays!
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Lily,
How wonderful! Hope you have an excellent time with lots of sampling and tasting.
We do have some addresses for you that might be worth a visit:
nl.pinterest.com/weeke…nch-spots/
Happy holidays to you and your family and friends and happy baking too!
Ed & Marieke
Lily says
Thanks a mil for the link.
I’m already on batch number 2!
Lily
Weekend Bakers says
Sounds excellent.
Happy Holiday baking!
Karyn says
Hi – just wondering how your spelt experiment worked and if you subbed your spelt in a 1-1 ratio? Did you use white or wholemeal spelt?
Many thanks!
Karyn
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Karyn,
Yes, it was a success and the ratio is indeed 1:1. You can find our recipe here: www.weekendbakery.com/posts…nd-orange/. We used white spelt flour for this recipe.
Happy baking!
Marieke
Cheryl says
I have yet to try this recipe but based on the comments, it looks like a winner. I’m wondering how long these cookies keep for? I’d like to send this cookies off in the mail to family. Would it still taste good, properly sealed, after say a week or two?
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Cheryl,
It sounds lovely of course, but it will be a bit of a challenge. We have never tried it ourselves.
We would advice to bake the cookies just a bit longer, so they are completely ‘dry’, so for this you would have to bake the cookies at a lower temperature for longer. Pack in plastic that you try and suck all the air out of or use a vacuum machine of you have one. Supermarket cookies are baked completely dry and the oxygen in the package is replaced by CO2 and often with added conservatives they will keep ‘forever’. The beauty of home baking is freshness and leaving this stuff out of course.
When in doubt, maybe a nice alternative would be to send the dry ingredients in a jar with the recipe as a ‘bake your own’ kit.
Good luck with it and happy Holiday baking!
Marieke
Carol Ross-Baumann says
I’ve sent these cookies through the mail (5-7 day delivery). I pack them well in a bakery box lined with waxed tissue (some specialty stores in the US sell these items). Then I use a lot of bubble wrap in the packing box. They’ve arrived safe and sound. I’ve had the cookies last a couple of weeks without a problem. I think you should be fine, but I don’t know about shipping internationally, if that’s what you want to do.