Spekulaas – Dutch Spice Biscuits

The fifth of December is Saint Nicholas Day which is the day that Dutch people traditionally celebrate their Christmas, so in honour of it I decided to bake some Dutch spice biscuits, or Spekulaas as they are called in the Netherlands. I have a few different wooden biscuit moulds, but decided just to use the Saint Nicholas one and his helper Zwarte Piet (Black Piet). Then that was all taking far too long so I gave up and just used cookie cutters after doing a few. I did find it very easy to get the dough out of the moulds though, the trick is to use a pastry brush to dust down the inside of the mould and tap off the excess, then there’s no problem with the dough getting stuck in there. Yes some of mine have been left in a wee bit too long, but I really like slightly burnty around the edges biscuits – honest!

Spekulaas Biscuits

Ingredients:

6 oz plain flour
3 oz butter
1/2 a teaspoon of cinammon
1/2 a teaspoon of ground cloves
a pinch of nutmeg
3 oz dark brown sugar
1 small beaten egg or milk

Rub the flour, spices and butter together until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add the sugar and mix together, then make a well and add in the beaten egg. Mix together into a dough and knead into a ball. Flour your worktop/pastryboard and roll out the dough to about a quarter of an inch if using cookie cutters. Bake in the oven at 180 Celsius for 12 to 15 minutes. Gas mark 4. 360 Fahrenheit. Keep an eye on them as they may bake faster than that.

You can play around with the spices, maybe adding ginger too or adding more of the spices than the recipe calls for, depending on your own taste. These spices always shout Christmas to me.

Lemon and Poppy Seed Scones

lemon and poppy seed scones2

I’ve not had a lot of success with my scone baking in the past, in fact they could be used as hockey pucks as they are generally so solid and dry but when a friend of mine raved about lemon and poppy seed scones from a nearby tearoom I decided to have a bash at them. Jack thinks that the browner scones looked overdone, I think they were supposed to be paler but they all tasted fine. I gave some to a friend and she says they tasted even better toasted – it enhances the lemon flavour – I’d never thought of toasting scones before.

I found a recipe online, but tweaked it a wee bit by adding a few drops of lemon essence to the lemon juice as for me there’s no possibility of something tasting too lemony. I’ve baked these scones twice now and they’ve worked perfectly, but I’m in two minds about the poppy seeds. They don’t add any flavour I believe but obviously add texture. They have a tendency to get stuck in your teeth though. I happened to have a packet of poppy seeds anyway but when they are finished I don’t know if I would bother buying more, I might prefer the scones without them. The ingredients below make 20 scones so you might want to halve the quantities.

900g self-raising flour
225g margarine
85g sugar
30g poppy seeds
zest of 1 lemon
juice of 1 lemon
a few drops of lemon essence
2 eggs
333ml milk

Mix the self-raising flour, margarine, sugar, poppy seeds, lemon juice and lemon essence in a bowl and rub together until the mix resembles fine breadcrumbs. Then add the eggs and milk and mix to a dough.

Tip the dough out onto a floured surface and roll out to a thickness of 4 cm or 1.5 inches, cut into rounds using a 70 mm/ 2.75″ (ish) cutter. Put them onto a baking tray. Brush with milk ( I missed this bit out as I used my pastry brush for a DIY project a while ago!)

Put into the middle of a pre-heated oven at 160 Centigrade for 20 minutes. Gas mark 3, or Fahrenheit 325.

Delicious with butter but for a super lemon experience why not try lemon curd.