Search

Join Culinate! Login or Register

Join Culinate

With a free Culinate membership, you can:

Create your own recipe collections
Queue recipes for later use
Blog your culinary endeavors
Be part of our online community of cooks
And much more…

Join Now

Speculaas (Saint Nicholas Cookies)

From the book The Gourmet Cookie Book by Gourmet Editors

Yield

4 doz. cookies

Introduction

A former minister of foreign affairs in Holland offended many cooks when he informed the world that the speculaas was Europe’s best cookie. That is a matter of opinion, but it is a matter of fact that they are among the oldest cookies on record, for speculaas have been baked in the Netherlands for centuries. They began life as gifts to the gods, left in the fields as offerings to ensure a good harvest. But humans are equally enamored of this cross between a spice cookie and a shortbread because of their comfortingly robust and old-fashioned flavor.

Ingredients

	3	cups flour
	4	tsp. baking powder
	1	Tbsp. cinnamon
	1	tsp. cloves
	1	tsp. nutmeg
	½	tsp. ground aniseed
	½	tsp. salt
	½	tsp. ground ginger or white pepper
	1	cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
	1½	cups firmly packed dark brown sugar
	3	Tbsp. milk, dark rum, or brandy
	~	Blanched almonds, halved or slivered
	1	egg white, lightly beaten

Steps

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Butter a cookie sheet.
Into a bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, spices, and salt.
In a bowl of an electric mixer, beat the butter with the dark brown sugar until the mixture is light and fluffy. Stir in the milk, rum, or brandy.
Gradually add the flour mixture, stirring until it is well combined, and form the dough into a ball. Knead the dough on a board sprinkled with about ¼ cup flour, and roll it out into a rectangle ¼-inch thick. With a sharp knife or cutter, cut the dough into rectangles, 2½ inches by 1½ inches.
Put the rectangles on the prepared baking sheet. Decorate them with the blanched almonds, gently pushing the nuts into the dough, and brush them with the lightly beaten egg white.
Bake the cookies for 12 to 15 minutes, or until they are browned and firm.

This content is from the book The Gourmet Cookie Book by Gourmet Editors.

Pure Dessert

My Gingersnaps

Roast Figs, Sugar Snow

Danish Christmas Rice Pudding With Berry Compote

Classic Home Desserts

Cornmeal-Almond Biscotti

Sweet 16

Gingersnaps

Crunchy and chewy, these are the perfect ginger cookies

Think before you type

Culinate welcomes comments that are on-topic, clean, and courteous. For the benefit of the community we reserve the right to delete comments that contain advertising, personal attacks, profanity, or which are thinly disguised attempts to promote another website.

Please enter your comment

Comment

I recommend this recipe

Format: Bare URLs are automatically linked; use this style: [http://www.example.com "place text to be linked here"] for prettier links. You may specify *bold* or _italic_ text. No HTML please.