recipe speculaas

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" Speculaas " with rich almond filling

<http://www.coquinaria.nl/english/recipes/muffins.htm> Speculaas muffins

Confectionary for the feast of Saint on a painting from Jan Steen.

" Speculaas " or " speculoos " is one of the Dutch culinary specialties. It is a

spiced biscuit, made with wooden forms. They are typically winterfood, and

especially associated with the feast of " Sint Nicolaas " or Saint ,

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 name seems to derive from the Latin " speculum " (mirror, the biscuits had

the carved figure of the mould in mirror image). Old wooden biscuit moulds

show biblical scenes, historic events, ships, windmills, mermaids, and of

cours images of Saint with the small children he had saved

according to the legend. Single youngsters could recieve a " vrijer " or

" vrijster " (lover m/f). According to some this could be considered as a

marriage proposal from the giver. These large speculaas dolls (maybe they

can be compared to the " gingerbread men " ) were often decorated with

coloured icing, silver pills and even leaf gold.

The speculaas biscuits from before, say, 1850, were made with a very hard

dough containingrye flour and honey. These biscuits were so hard they could

only be eaten if they were dissolved into a sweet (and tasty) porridge.

In my youth we used to to eat small speculaas biscuits on richly buttered

white sandwiches as a special treat.

The dough is easy to prepare, and children will love to help with it.

The amounts for the dough are for the speculaas with almond stuffing. If you

just want to bake biscuits, you can easily halve the amounts.

If you are allergic to almonds, simply leave them out of the dough, and use

paste of legumes instead of almond paste.

Several new and old carved wooden moulds for Speculaas.

Ingredients:

500 gram simple white flour

250 gram cold butter

250 gram sugar

2 eggs, stirred

1/2 decilitre cream

salt to taste (don't forget this, and be liberal, otherwise your speculaas

will taste bland)

50 to 60 gram

<http://www.coquinaria.nl/english/recipes/speculaas.htm#Speculaaskruiden:>

spices for speculaas

grated skin of 2 untreated lemons

200 gram flaked almonds, broken in to little pieces (optional)

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

Preparation in advance:

Mix flour with the baking powder and soda and spices (don't forget the salt,

otherwise the speculaas will be bland). Add the butter, cut it with two

knives to little chunks the size of peanuts. Add almonds and lemon peel, and

as much egg and cream as necessary to obtain a firm dough. Place the dough

in a bowl, cover, and let it rest, preferably a whole night, in the

refrigerator.

With this dough you can make small bisuits, called speculaasjes. To roll the

dough out, the dough must be taken out of the refrigerator well in advance,

because otherwise it will be too firm to roll out (because of the butter in

it). Once the dough is rolled out, you can use either a cookie cutter, or

real Dutch wooden speculaas moulds. If you use these, be sure to sprinkle

the mould liberally with flour ever time you press fresh dough into it.

Tap the mould upside down on the worktop to free the speculaas dough. Cut

the sides to make a neat form, and place the biscuits on a greased baking

sheet.

Bake the biscuits in the preheated oven (175ºC) until done (about 20

minutes). Let the biscuits cool on a cake rack.

To make the speculaas with almond stuffing, we go on:

500 gram pure

<http://www.coquinaria.nl/english/recipes/speculaas.htm#Amandelspijs:>

almond paste

1 or 2 eggs

1 to 3 tablespoons rose water

whole peeled and blanched almonds for decoration

Preparation in advance:

Stir the eggs with the rosewater. Knead the almond paste with the eggs and

rosewater to moisten it. Don't add the liquids all at once, start with half

the amount, then add a little at the time until the stuffing is smooth. Like

the dough, the almond stuffing has to rest in the refrigerator for at least

one day before use.

Preparation:

Divide the dough in two. Roll out one half, and cover a bakingsheet with it.

If you have trouble rolling the dough out and transferring it to the baking

sheet, just flatten it with your hand to your satisfaction. Spread the

moistened almond paste on the dough, but be sure to keep away from the

borders of the dough.

Roll our the second portion of dough, drape it over the stuffing, press the

sides of both sheets ofdough well together.

With a knife trace a pattern of lozenges, and decorate further with the

almonds.

Bake the filled speculaas for 20 to 30 minutes in a preheated oven (175ºC).

Extra recipe: 'Banketstaaf' and 'Banketletter' (Dutch almond pastry,

litterally meaning 'banquet stick' and 'banquet letter').

Roll out 350 gram

<http://www.coquinaria.nl/english/recipes/dough.htm#EIERKORSTDEEG> puff

pastry into a long, rectangular sheet.

Shape 250 gram almond paste into a thin roll (2½ centimeter or 1 inch),

place on the sheet of dough. Fold the dough over the stuffing, seal with

egg. Cut away any excess dough.

You can leave the roll straight as a rod, but you can also shape it into

letters (the Dutch also present each other with their initial in chocolate

letters).

Adorn the 'banketstaaf' with halved almonds and/or the excess dough.

Let the pastry rest in the refrigerator for a half hour. Meanwhile, preheat

the oven to 220ºC/425ºF.

Brush the dough with lightly beaten egg, eggwhite or milk, then bake it for

twenty minutes.

Almond paste:

Almond paste can be bought, but you can easily make it yourself: grind

blanched sweet almonds to a flour (or buy ground almonds), add as much sugar

in weight as you have ground almonds, and add 1 egg for every 100 to 150

gram of almond flour (depending on the size of the eggs) .

A cheap replacement of almond paste is a paste made with ground legumes (I

believe haricot beans are used).

Spice mix for Speculaas:

In The Netherlands you can buy the spices for speculaas premixed. I doubt

whether that is the case elsewhere in the world. So here you have a mixture

to make yourself: 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). The used

spices betray the age of the recipe for speculaas: this combination of

spices can be found in many fifteenth century recipes.