The Internet Chef » Cookies

Holiday recipe: How to make Speculaas Cookies

Bridget — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 22:11:32 +0000

My Speculaas Bring all the Boys to the Yard…

The first time I tried a speculaas cookie ( pronounced speky-las) was when I was a first year chefs apprentice. I was working as a commis chef in a large hotel on the garde manger section or cold larder station of a 200+ seater ala-carte restaurant. I was learning the “ways of the hotel kitchens”, which in anyone’s language is a tough and lonely place when you are a first year. The other chefs were dismissive to say the least and my being a young female chef certainly did not improve the situation.

The language was vulgar, the behavior grotesque and I took little comfort from my working environment. I managed to make friends with a few of the front of house or floor staff as they were treated worse than I was by the male chefs who ruled over the iron stove tops. I would swap treats with my secret floor staff friends by giving them sneaky plates of food from my section in return for shots of espresso with a little side order of cookies that I grew to be more than fond of.

It was these little speculaas cookies, individually packaged and sold as Dutch windmill cookies that I loved. I would hide them away from the other chefs and enjoy them as a tasty morsel with a quickly thrown back espresso before returning to my station to ready myself for service. Their lightly spiced crunch worked so well with coffee and only improved from a quick dunking into the deep black brew. They seemed almost exotic and unlike any other cookie I had ever tried, and were the little touch of comfort that was so hard to come by in the dungenous hotel kitchen.

Years later with hotel life far behind me I was fortunate enough to stumble across a recipe for these spicy treats from the Netherlands, and one bite was all I needed to be reminded of how warm and forgiving a little treat can be at the right time.

I have adjusted the recipe slightly to encourage a more caramelized taste and have left the design of my cookies plain all though traditionally Speculaas were highly decorated cookies, being shaped by wooden molds with intricate patterns on them to celebrate the stories of St Nicholas a.k.a Santa Claus. You can use what ever shape you find pleasing.

Speculaas Cookies

Makes 20-25 cookies, dependant on what size cookie cutter you decide to use.

This recipe is best started the day before you intend to bake as upon resting the dough overnight in the refrigerator allows time for the spices to permeate through dough.

150g butter ~ softened

100g dark brown muscovado sugar

2 Tbls molasses syrup

225g plain flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp sea salt flakes

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground cloves

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp grated nutmeg

1 tsp white pepper

Icing sugar or powdered sugar for dusting

In a large bowl cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the molasses syrup and stir to combine. At this stage, attempt the urge to start licking the bowl as this one of my favorite creamed concoctions!
Add the remaining ingredients and mix together until a dough is formed. Time permitting, cover the dough in cling-film and allow to rest overnight in the fridge to give the spices time to permeate their flavors through out the dough. If time does not allow, continue straight on to rolling out the dough.
If resting the dough overnight, remove from the fridge on Day 2 and allow the dough to come up to room temperature on the bench for a couple of hours.
Preheat the oven to 180C on fan bake.
Sprinkle a clean work surface with icing or powdered sugar and roll the dough out thinly to about 3 mm in thickness. If the rolling pin get sticky, sprinkle lightly with icing sugar.
Using your desired cookie cutter shape, cut out your shapes and place slightly a part on a parchment or silicone lined baking sheet, sprinkling the cutter with icing sugar also if it sticks to the dough.
Bake in the oven for 15-18 minutes until dark brown. Allow your speculaas to cool on a wire rack before storing in a airtight container.

What is your favourite speculaas recipe?

Gingernuts anyone?

Bridget — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 13:24:29 +0000

Growing up, biscuits and cookies were graded on the following scientific scale in my household.

One for Taste, Two for crunch, and three for dunkability.

A biscuit just wasn’t a bisucit unless it had serious hang time in your cup once it was dunked into the steaming brew.

If it softened and fell into your mug too soon, it was given the thumbs down. A few seconds before succumbing to the cup were usually passed by as well. But the biscuit that you could dunk, continue reading the morning paper without even so much as taking a bite, turn the page AND THEN chomp was a serious contender for Ultimate Biscuit Champion or U.B.C.

U.B.C. went to a little wee morsel known in my neck of the woods as “The Gingernut”. It was the grand cookie contender as it ticked all the boxes when it came time to put the kettle on.

They were ever so tasty ~ a combination of sweet and spicy with a substanital crunch. The ginger was prominent with a background of treacle for depth of flavor.

Since moving country, I have missed my U.B .C and it wasn’t until a recent Eureka moment over a classic Kiwi Cookbook that I came up with the challenge to create my own Gingernuts.

To get me in the mood I listened to the advertisement above, claiming “There’s no gingernuts taste quite the same, ask for Griffins Gingernuts by name…” Well I beg to differ Griffins…

photo by Ted_major

Gingernut Biscuits slash Cookies

Ingredients

125g unsalted butter ~ softened

50g dark brown sugar

2 Tbs golden syrup ~ warmed

1 Tbs molasses ~ warmed

1 tsp baking soda dissolved in 1 Tbs boiling water

175g plain flour

3 1/2 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

couple of fine grindings of black pepper

pinch of salt

Methodology

Cream together the butter, sugar and just warmed golden syrup and molasses. Make sure the mixture is well combined and the butter has been fully incorporated into the sugar and syrup.
Add the soda dissolved in water and stir in well.
Sift together the flour, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, pepper and salt and mix into the wet ingredients.
Stir to combine and then turn out on to a large piece of cling film, rolling up to form an even sized sausage. Make sure the cling film tightly covers the “cookie sausage” and leave to harden in the fridge for 2-3 hours.
Preheat the oven on fan bake 180C/ 350 F
remove the cling film from the dough and cut the dough into 5mm thick slices. Lay them on a parchment lined cookie tray and brush the tops lightly with cold water. Ensure that the gingernuts aren’t to close to together as they will expand upon cooking
Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes. Watch they don’t get to dark as they burn quite easily.
Leave to cool thoroughly on a wire rack before storing them in an airtight container.
These biscuits improve with age so if you can leave them for a day before eating them, all the better. If you can’t manage it, I completely understand.

15 Twittarific Chocolate Cookie and Biscuit Recipes for Bookmarking

Bridget — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 11:39:32 +0000

Welcome to the SECOND installment of The Internet Chef’s Salute to Chocolate!

In our first post , we discovered the virtues of a good Chocolate cake with a wonderfully inspiring list of 21 Twittalicious Chocolate Cake recipes that you need to try

Today I would like to tempt you even further with a superb collection of Chocolate Cookie, Biscuit and bar recipes that will have you positively swooning from all that Chocolate goodness.

Did I mention that there’s Chocolate in this post!

Thank you to all the wonderful food bloggers who have supplied us with such a virtual feast of Chocolate wonders, and if you like this post, don’t forget to share the love with your followers and friends.

Chocolate Cookies, Biscuits and Bars.

Coconut Chocolate Chip Blondies from Tracey's Culinary Adventures

Browned Butter Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies from Recipe Girl

Chocolate Frangelico Crinkle Cookies from Daydreamer Desserts

Chocolate Cranberry Cinnamon Biscuits from Fisher Paykel

The Aptly Named Chocolate Wonders from Kitchenista

Moist and Delicious Fudgy Brownie Cookies from Lifes Ambrosia

Chocolate Malted Cookies from Scrumptious Photography

Bailey Irish Cream Brownies from Elizabeth Spice

Chocolate Marshmellow Whoopie Pies from Dinner with Julie

Chocolate Mousse Shortbread Cookies from Ceramic Canvas

Raspberry Macarons with Chocolate Ganache from Pastry Chef by Fire

Chocolate, Peanut butter, Oatmeal Cookies by Dinner & Dessert

Original Toll house Cookies from The Cooking Photographer

Delicious Black Forest Cookies from Taste and Tell

Jakes Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe from Two Peas and Their Pod

Ultimate Top 30 Healthy Snack Recipe Posts on the Internet

Bridget — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 04:30:26 +0000

The Healthy Snack

From the depths of one small metal box covered with slender calved pink fairies and wistful looking princesses, I endeavour to supply my culinarily adventurous 7 year old daughter Coco with an appetizing array of healthy snack lunch offerings for her to take to school each day.

I have discovered that the more ambitious we become with the daily delights, the more disappointed we end up by whats available on our supermarket shelves.

A trip to my local supermarket, recycled canvas bag in hand, had me tripping and fumbling my way through a product list on the back of a granola bar that contained no less than 39 separate ingredients. I thought I was buying a cereal bar not a tub of polyunsaturated cholesterol free omega enriched low salt margarine. Healthy snack? I think not.

As I’m not one that normally sports a scientist in my handbag when I go to the grocery store whom is able to tell me what raising agents 170 and food acid 296 are doing shacked up together in my cereal bar alongside a mountain of sugar and a truck load of fat (breathe breathe), I decided that what’s best for me and little Miss Coco is a matter of refining and simplifying the snack process.

So in times of great inspirational need, I find myself chatting with fellow foodie friends on twitter like @dragonskitchen and @figandcherry and visiting my favourite Internet food blogs to help me collect a beautiful selection of healthy snack recipes that I can now share with you in all there wholegrain glory.

I have avoided recipes that are high in fat, sugar and anything artificial or plastic sounding, as well as trying to keep it interesting and palate exciting for who is now a mighty pleased wee scholar.

Microwave potato chips by Nooschi

Baked masala vadai- Chef In You

Baked chicken buns- Cafe Nilson

Fruited muffins- Dishing Up Delights

Bento box ideas- Soy and Pepper

Watermelon pops by The Hungry Housewife

Apples and nutella by Taste Duds

4 ingredients Granola bars- Kiss My Spatula

Peanut butter honey bars- Active Life Cooking

Nut free granola bars by Vegan Visitor

Potato chips- The Good Mood Food Blog

Healthy chocolate cake by Healthy Indulgences

Corn and black pepper crackers- NYtimes

Monkey bars by Healthy Tasty Chow

Popcorn snack mix- Latest Addictions

Oatmeal Almond Cookies- ZOMTbakes

Roasted Pepitas-The Brassica Diaries

Smoothie roll up by Veggie Wedgie

Banana choc granola bars- Bitchincamero

Roasted Chickpeas by The Sweetest Kitchen

Golden beet chips by Foodista

Multigrain energy bars- Wholegrain Gourmet

Superfood your popcorn by Veggie Wedgie

Garlic Edamame by The Cooking of Joy

Cinnamon spiced dates by Veggie Wedgie

Smoky cashew nuts by Dana Treat

Oat Fig Bars from Artsy Foodie

Granola Bars by The Sugarshop

Apple chips by Food Lovers Journal

Homemade snack bars by Food 4 Tots

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