Speculoos! Or what should have been Speculoos.
This is more of a recipe review than a how-to. It’s a test between using ground caramel or toasted sugar for infusing a biscuit with caramel goodness.
Thanks to seriouseats for the original recipe and inspiration for testing:
Click below for the full recipe and evaluation, with all measurements and techniques used:
Prepare the dough
Evenly blend your ground spices
The measurements below are just relative weights for all the spices, you can make as much or as little as you want, so long as the spices remain in the same proportion to one another. The recipe its self only calls for a teaspoon of this blend.
- 15g Cinnamon
- 2.5g Nutmeg
- 1.5g Clove
- 1g Cardamom
- 1g Anise
Beat all ingredients but the flour into the butter
- 150g granulated sugar (toasted if you have the time and patience)
- 85g butter
- 5g / 1 tsp baking powder
- 1g/ 1/2 tsp of the spice blend
- Pinch salt
Beat some water in to loosen the mixture.
- 15g / 1 tbsp water
Continue beating, adding in the flour to form a dough.
- 155g plain flour
Roll the dough out and cut it into squares/rectangles. [1:28-2:28]
Place the biscuits on a baking sheet lined with baking paper and bake at 180°C (14-16 mins)
Let the Speculoos biscuits cool on the tray until they solidify.
Evaluation
That was the jist of things, however that doesn’t mean this was a good biscuit by in any sense. There were still many issues that I had with this recipe, which led to some tweaks for this recipe:
- Too much baking powder – The caramel sweetened biscuits rose like gingerbread whilst the toasted sugar biscuits collapsed but in both cases I could taste the baking powder on my teeth it was so strong!
- No discernible difference in taste between blitzed caramel and toasted sugar – The biscuits with caramel as a sweetener were slightly more bitter, not great, especially given the structural impact the caramel had. The dryer caramel needed an additional 15% of the flour’s weight in water in order to cream it into the butter, which inevitably affected the biscuit.
- Mistakes with the granule sizes – In both cases I used ground sugar, for fairness. However this superfine sugar may have reduced the maximum volume of air trapped in the butter due to a lack of aggregation.
More to Read
If you’ve been at least intrigued by this recipe (or lack of) check out the original idea over at seriouseats or, to see more of my trials by caramelised sugar, have a look at the toasted sugar recipe.
