Speculaas (Dutch Almond-Spiced Windmill Cookies)

📷 · File:Gevuld speculaas - Klopper and Stolk 2024-11-29.jpg, CC0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Dessert · Netherlands · Amsterdam

Speculaas (Dutch Almond-Spiced Windmill Cookies) 🥧

Name: Speculaas (Dutch Almond-Spiced Windmill Cookies)
Prep time: 24 min
Cook time: 36 min
Total time: 60 min
Yield: 2-4 servings
Cuisine: Dutch
Ingredients: 250 g brown butter (butter cooked to hazelnut color, reweighed to 220 g); 150 g dark brown sugar; 1 tbsp speculaas spice mix (cinnamon 4 : nutmeg 2 : cloves 1 : white pepper 1 : ginger 1 : coriander 1, by parts); 300 g flour + 1 tsp baking powder, pinch salt; 1–2 tbsp milk if needed; For gevulde style: 200 g almond paste + a beaten egg for the glaze

Every November Dutch kitchens smell of speculaas: a brown-butter dough darkened with the spice box — cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, white pepper, ginger and the secret coriander seed — stamped thick with carved windmill molds and baked crisp. On Sinterklaas Eve families cut almond-paste letters from gevulde speculaas instead. One cookie, two legends: the ship's-biscuit story and the devil-spice story, both worth chewing over.

North Holland Dutch ⏱ 60 min Easy

Method

1

Brown the butter, cool to soft. Cream with brown sugar and the spice mix until glossy.
2

Fold in flour and baking powder to a stiff dough — barely kneaded. Wrap and chill at least 30 minutes (overnight is tradition).
3

Roll 4 mm thick and cut windmills, or press into a carved speculaas plank mold, tapping out cleanly. Chill cuts 10 minutes.
4

Bake 175 °C, 15–18 minutes: edges matte, surfaces crackled, centers still faintly soft. They crisp fully as they cool.
5

Gevulde version: spread almond paste on a pastry base, lattice dough over it, egg-wash, bake, then score into Sinterklaas letters while warm.

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Speculaas (Dutch Almond-Spiced Windmill Cookies) 🥧

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