How to make homemade Speculoos Cookies from scratch! Old fashioned speculaas cookies are pressed into a mold for a beautiful finish!
Day 9 of the annual 12 Days of Christmas Cookies 2021!
I’ve been obsessed with homemade speculoos cookies ever since Biscoff Cookies appeared on Delta and swept the Nation. (I am not immune.) For years I perfected the spice mix and have been working on the cookie recipe.
This recipe is less sweet than Biscoff and more in line with traditional, old-fashioned speculoos cookies. In my craze, I even bought several vintage molds off Ebay. I dove into the depths of the internet and my extensive antique cookbook collection to gather all the tips and tricks for beautiful molded cookies.
They are easier to pull together than you might think, so, go forth, make a big batch of Speculoos Spice Mix and make some cookies! Even if you don’t have a mold, you can roll the dough and cut it out with cookie cutters.
Stay tuned, because I’ve got something else delicious up my sleeve to make using these cookies.
What are Speculoos Cookies?
What a weird word, right? There are rumors it derives from the Latin word "speculum" which means mirror and could refer to the stamp used to decorate speculaas in bas-relief. We now do that with the molds! "Speculoos" is the Belgian spelling, in comparison to the Dutch "speculaas" and apparently spices were more expensive to import to Beligium so there are less spices in that mixture. My coveted spice mix recipe includes:
- Ground Cinnamon
- Ground Cloves
- Ground Nutmeg
- White Pepper, freshly ground
- Aniseed, freshly ground
- Ground ginger
- Cardamom, freshly ground (from green pods)
Speaking of the molds, it helps if you dust them in rice flour before you use them (just trust me...)
Day 8 (a new personal fave) was Double Chocolate Biscotti!
Day 7 (Part 2) of the annual 12 Days of Christmas Cookies 2021 were Cinnamon Almond Bars!
Traditional Raspberry Linzer Cookies were Day 7 (Part 1) of 12 Days of Christmas Cookies 2021!
These Cardamom Crescent Cookies were Day 6!
We adored Part 2 of Day 5: the traditional Pfeffernüsse Cookies!
Part 1 of Day 5 was the wondrous: Moravian Christmas Cookie!
We all loved Day 4 of the 12 Days of Christmas Cookies: Orange Financiers!
Day 3 of the 12 Days of Christmas Cookies: Pistachio Cranberry Sablee Cookies!
We had Day 2 of the 12 Day Christmas Cookie celebration: Cashew Caramel Pretzel Blondies!
Don’t forget about Part One of Day 2 of the 12 Day Cookie Extravaganza: Hungarian Walnut Rolls!
And who could leave out Day 1, Italian Pizzelles!? Make them all!
Homemade Speculoos Cookies
Ingredients
- 150 g Butter (unsalted, room temperature)
- 150 g Dark brown sugar
- 50 g Hot water
- 330 g All Purpose Flour
- 3 T Speculoos Spice Mix (Recipe Here)
- ½ t Kosher salt
- Rice flour (for dusting the molds)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment.
- Whisk together flour, salt and spices.
- Cream butter and dark brown sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment.
- Alternately add dry ingredients and water. Mix to combine.
- Chill overnight or at least 2 hours to hydrate and allow the spices to intensify.
- If you are going to use regular cookie cutters, roll out dough on a smooth surface, lightly dusted with flour. Roll to about ¼ inch thick. Cut cookies and bake in preheated oven for 15-20 minutes or until matte and set around the edges. The time will depend on the shape of cookie.
- If you are going to use a traditional speculoos cookie mold, grab the rice flour and a sifter. Sift some rice flour over the top of the mold, turn it over and give it a gentle tap to remove the excess.
- Grab a piece of the chilled dough and press it into the mold, leaving at least ⅛th inch on top of extra. Press the mold firmly flat on the counter, and slice the excess off by running a sharp paring knife across the surface. Lifting off the extra dough and setting it to the side. You can continue to reuse the dough, but it comes out of the molds easier when it is chilled.
- Use the tip of the knife to lift a corner of the cookie dough out of the mold. Gently pull the cookie from the mold. It should release easily and have a perfect impression of the mold!
- Place cookies on a lined baking sheet and continue with the remainder of the dough.
- Don’t forget to dust with rice flour between each round of cookies!!!
- Bake in preheated oven for 15-20 minutes or until set around the edges and matte in the center.
- If the cookies cool and are not totally crisp, you can continue to bake them in a 300°F oven until they have completely crisped. They won’t be completely crisp until they have cooled.
Video Instructions
I really wanted to like this recipe and chose this one over the others because of the pastry chef making it, but unfortunately it did not work for me in many ways. I’m not a pastry chef but I am very well skilled at baking and understand the science behind it and this recipe was a multifaceted disappointment. First, the dough was VERY crumbly after adding the properly measured flour and hot water, I ended up having to add more water after it had cooled in the fridge in order to roll this for my cookie cutter. I did not have a wooden mold and perhaps it would have worked better with that, but the cookies should have been able to be rolled and cut per the recipe. Secondly, The recipe calls for putting the dough in the refrigerator and then rolling out, but this was absolutely impossible! The dough was so hard (and crumbly) I ended up having to warm it up and that’s when I put in the extra hot water so I was able to actually roll this out with a wooden rolling pin. I ended up baking these four different amounts of time for four different batches to get the right crunch, which was never achieved … They were rolled to 1/4” thick and no matter how long they were baked at 300 after the initial 325, they were not right (they went from being soft to hard and not the right kind of crunchy) I tried 1/8 of an inch thick and I ended up having to bake them for 15 minutes with the same results. I tried forming one with my hands after refrigeration before adding the extra water because it was so crumbly I couldn’t roll it and it ended up being exactly the same as it was when I had to add extra water, so that’s not what made the cookies texture off. Even with everything I tried, they were not that flaky crunchy, tasted very doughy and the mix of spices tasted nothing like a speculaas/speculoos that I’ve ever had. I tried to save them by very lightly misting them with water and sprinkling them with coarse sugar and putting back into the oven to dry out.
That was after trying everything else. Very disappointing sorry to say hope somebody else has luck with this recipe
I’m sorry you had such a difficult time with the recipe. I recorded a video so you can see me make the exact recipe step by step. And, as always, WEIGH your ingredients especially flour.