Speculaas (and kruidnoten)

Another recipe for using those trusty speculaas spices! I love this warm, aromatic spice mix. And as you can see from the title, these are the biscuits it's actually meant for.

In Holland, speculaas is often made using a wooden mould. As I didn't have one with the traditional windmill shapes, I used a bird and a rabbit a good friend gave me once. But you know, that's a lot of work... Being a lazy baker, I turned the rest of my dough into kruidnoten! Speculaas, you can get and eat all year long, whereas when you form little balls that make button biscuits, you only see them around Sinterklaas time. 

Sinterklaas? Yes, the original Saint Nick! The Dutch still do the whole present-giving thing on the Eve of his birthday, December 5th. Several traditional treats are involved, but arguably the most loved are kruidnoten. Because they're so small, they used to be thrown into the room by the handful. I remember scrabbling about the room as a child to find the most for myself before the others got to them. But because we moved abroad and there were always only our two kids in the room (and one was always bigger), we did the parenty thing and divided the biscuits equally amongst the poor.

Enough background, on to the recipe!

Ingredients:

200 g / 1⅔ cup self-raising flour
100 g / 7 tbsp butter
100 g / ½ cup light brown sugar
2 tbsp speculaas spices
pinch of salt
2 tbsp milk
rice flour for coating the moulds

Steps:

1. If making kruidnoten, preheat the oven to 80°F, 175°C. If going for speculaas, postpone this step until after the dough has chilled.
2. Cut up the butter and, guess what? Mix everything together into one big ball.
3. For kruidnoten, you can start forming ½-1 inch balls straight away.
   If you want to make speculaas, wrap the ball in clingfilm or a wax cloth and leave it in the fridge for half an hour or even overnight. Afterwards, coat your moulds with the rice flour. Don't forget to preheat the oven (yes, that would be me). Take some of the dough and knead it 1-2 times to make it pliable, then push it into the mould. Cut off the excess with a sharp knife and turn the biscuits out onto your baking sheet.
   
4. Bake them for 13-16 minutes. This depends on the thickness of your moulds/biscuits. Mine are quite thin, so I only needed about 7 minutes, but the kruidnoten need a bit longer.
5. Enjoy!

For a variation, try sprinkling some shaved almonds on the speculaas before turning them out of the mould. Also very yum!