Speculaasbrokken are typically Dutch and are often eaten in the fall and winter, especially around Sinterklaas. However, they are available all year round, and as far as I’m concerned, just make your own speculaasbrokken with this easy recipe.
Speculaas is a very popular flavor in the Netherlands. You could call it the Dutch gingerbread. With a homemade speculaas spice mix you can add this delicious taste to all kinds of baked goods.
I love everything with that spicy taste. It doesn’t matter if it’s a traditional recipe or if I just turn another recipe into a Speculaas version.
Speculaasbrokken are a traditional Dutch recipe. In the store you usually buy big crunchy pieces, that you break into smaller pieces, with my recipe you get softer pieces. Personally, I like that best!
Another nice bonus: the house smells deliciously of speculaas spices when you make these speculaas cookies. For that alone, you’ll want to get in the kitchen right away!
The list of ingredients for speculaas chunks is not complicated, but each ingredient plays an important role. I’ll walk you through each one:
TIP: Speculaas and speculoos are two very different things but yet so similar, you can read about the difference between speculoos and speculaas here.
The main difference between speculaas and gingerbread is the use of spices. Speculaas spices contain more (and different) spices in total, and cinnamon is the main spice.
In gingerbread spices, both ginger and cinnamon are prominent, but because ginger has a more pronounced flavor, you taste it above them.
Even though I love the gingerbread spices the most, the gingerbread spices are also a big favorite of mine and I use them both a lot. Do you have a preference or do you, like me, like to alternate?
I have made speculoos biscuits many times, and so I am happy to share with you my two most important tips.
Making your own speculaas spice mix is nothing more than mixing a number of spices together.
This way you can choose the exact ratio between the different spices and create the most tasty speculaas spices.
And you can taste that in your speculaas. Use my recipe for speculaas spice mix to make your own jar full of these tasty spices.
I can’t say this enough: always let your cookie dough rest if the recipe calls for it. Do you like crunchy speculaas pieces? One way to achieve this is to let the dough rest long enough. The gluten in the self-rising flour will “relax” in the refrigerator, making for a crispier result.
Full flavor is another reason to prepare your dough the night before and let it rest overnight in the refrigerator. This will allow the spices to be absorbed into the dough and the flavor to develop.
After you have a cookie sheet full of speculaasbrokken, you probably won’t eat them all in one sitting (although I could). Fortunately, you can keep them well.
In an airtight container, they will keep for about two weeks. You can store them at room temperature.
In an airtight container, the cookies will keep for up to 3 months in the freezer. I like to store them between layer of parchment paper so they don’t stick to each other.
By storing them in a container that is not 100% airtight. This allows not only air to escape, but also moisture, which keeps the speculaas crunchy.
Personally, I use an airtight container because I like them soft.
A few things are important: make sure you let your dough cool well and long enough and use cold butter.
Also, make sure you do not roll out the dough too thickly and evenly. Optionally, you can leave it a little thicker at the edges so that the edges don’t cook faster than the inside. Finally, you could make the pieces a little smaller (i.e. don’t bake one big slice of speculaas dough, but more smaller strips) so that they crisp up more easily.
Remember that all cookies are soft when they come out of the oven and harden when they cool. So, you can’t immediately tell if your cookies are crisp enough when you take them out of the oven.
You can’t just leave out the sugar, you have to use a substitute that has the same effect as brown sugar. Sugar adds color and flavor as well as crunch.
You probably mean ‘gevulde speculaas’. Two layers of speculaas with almond paste in between.
Here is my recipe for Dutch filled speculaas.
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