These Speculaas Sugar Cookies are a fabulous alternative to the regular sugar cookies that I like to make for the holiday season. The festive flavours are so delicious, making them perfect for Christmas! And if you follow my expert tips, these sugar cookies will have minimal spread, making them perfect for decorating with fondant as well.
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I absolutely love baking gifts for my family and friends at Christmas. My Traditional Christmas Shortbread is always a winner and the Four Ingredient Christmas Cake is such an easy recipe, insanely delicious and SO well received! And I've recently fallen in love with decorating sugar cookies -there's just so many fun ways to decorate them! But I wanted to make my sugar cookies more Christmasy, which is why I developed this Speculaas Sugar Cookie recipe. The combination of vanilla fondant with the Speculaas Sugar Cookie is beyond magnificent!
What Are Speculaas Cookies
Also known as Speculoos, they're a traditional Dutch spiced cookie, often made with wooden molds. Think Biscoff cookies, but better! These Dutch Speculaas cookies often made in the shape of windmills and are made for St Nicholas' Day (the start of the Christmas season) on December 6.
Why You'll Love This Recipe
- Festive Biscoff flavour -these cookies have that golden Biscoff flavour everyone loves, by using my own simple Speculaas Spice Mix
- Perfect for gifting -these Speculaas Sugar Cookies can last up to 8 weeks, making them perfect for Christmas gifts.
- Cookie exchange -these delicious Christmas cookies are the perfect addition to exchange with your friends and loved ones
Ingredients
- unsalted butter gives these traditional cookies richness. Using unsalted butter means you can control the salt level
- brown sugar rather that regular white sugar, adding to the rich, golden flavour
- egg will also add richness to these delicious cookies and help bind the ingredients
- milk just a touch of room temperature milk to bind
- plain/all purpose flour gives your cookies structure
- baking powder a leavening agent to help the cookies rise and stay tender
- salt to help bring out the flavours
- cornflour makes these cookies extra soft
- Speculaas Spice Mix where all the flavour is at!
Substitutions and Additions
- Store bought spice blends -if you already have a favourite suitable spice blend at home, feel free to swap my Speculaas Spice MIx for what you love. Otherwise, Pumpkin Pie Mix from Trader Joes is great, or in Australia, try the St Nicholas Spekulaas blend from Gewurzhaus.
- Cornflour in Australia is substituted for a finely ground, white cornstarch in the USA
Tips and Tricks
- Use room temperature ingredients - make sure your butter, eggs and milk are at room temperature. The dough will come together more easily, resulting in less mixing time (meaning less spread)
- Mix low and slow - using a paddle attachment in your stand mixer, mix on low to medium until it just comes together
- Refrigerate the dough - wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate, preferably for 3 hours, as this will prevent the dough from spreading.
- Use a rolling pin with guides -for perfectly even and uniform cookies. This takes all the guesswork out of rolling your dough and makes it a much faster process. Grab my favourite cookie rolling pin here.
- Freeze after rolling - just for 15 minutes, as it will ensure that your cookie cutter cuts a clean shape and will be easier to handle.
- Perforated baking sheets - lining your cookie trays with perforated mats, rather than baking paper or parchment paper will help stop your cookies from spreading
Serving Suggestions
- Decorate them - I love to decorate my cookies with vanilla fondant and use Queen's Ready Roll Fondant as it tastes delicious, is easy to use and readily available in your local grocery store. Simply use the same cookie cutter to cut the fondant shapes after rolling and attach to the cookie with sugar syrup.
- Join them - just like my Empire Biscuits, but fill join them with a salted caramel instead of jam -it's a delicious combination!
- Make an ice cream sandwich - for the ultimate Christmas ice cream sandwich, fill them with my French Vanilla Ice Cream, or just a good quality vanilla ice cream
Storage
- Room temperature - store these cookies in an airtight container or cookie jar for at least 1 week
- Seal them for longer storage - for gifting my cookies, I store them in food safe cookie bags and use a heat sealer to keep them fresh for up to 8 weeks
If you try this recipe, please leave a review and be sure to share on Instagram, tagging @apple.cake.annie
Speculaas Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
- 170 g unsalted butter room temp
- 200 g brown sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 tablespoon milk room temp
- 370 g plain (all purpose) flour
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon cornflour
- 2 teaspoon spice mix see notes
Instructions
- In the large bowl of your stand mixer and using a paddle attachment on low, mix all of the dry ingredients until combined
- Make a well in the centre of the flour mixture and add the egg, butter and milk, mixing on low and increasing to low-medium until mixture comes together. Do not overmix -it doesnt need to form a ball yet
- Remove the mixture and knead by hand to form a ball, then flatten to a disc
- Cover dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 3 hours. It can be refrigerated up to 3 days at this point
- Divide dough in half, then roll each half out on your work surface, between 2 sheets of baking paper, to avoid the dough from sticking. Using a rolling pin with guides will help -I use this one, with a 6mm or ¼ inch guide
- Stack the 2 rolled sheets of dough, using the baking paper as a divider and place on a tray in the freezer for 15 minutes. You need to keep the dough flat
- At this point, you can preheat your oven to 160℃ fan forced, or 320℉ fan forced
- After 15 minutes, remove dough from freezer and cut out shapes. I use a 7cm round cookie cutter for the cookies in the photos
- Reroll the excess dough, freeze again for a few minutes, then cut out more shapes.
- Using an offset spatula, gently lift the shapes and place on a lined baking tray. I use a perforated baking sheet to help my cookies keep their shape. Baking paper is fine, but the cookies will likely have a tiny bit of spread.
- Bake cookies for 15 minutes, until golden brown. Remove from oven and allow to cool for 15 minutes, before moving the baked cookies to a cooling rack to cool completely
- Eat as is, or decorate with rolled fondant, cutting shapes with the same cutter you used for the cookies. I use this fondant roller for consistent thickness. To attach the fondant to the cookie, brush cookie with a little sugar syrup or water
- Store in an airtight container for 1 week.If heat sealed, they will last for 8 weeksCan be frozen once sealed, for 3 months
Notes
- Make my spice mix by combining
- 1 teaspoon of lemon zest
- 2 teaspoons of cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon of nutmeg
- ¼ teaspoon ground coriander powder
- ¼ teaspoon ground cloves
- ⅛ teaspoon of ginger
- ⅛ teaspoon of cardamom
- you will need 2 teaspoons of spice mix for this recipe
- or substitute for Pumpkin Spice mix, or St Nicholas Spekulaas mix
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Helen Atkins says
These taste absolutely divine! Perfection