Gevulde speculaas: another delicious Dutch treat for the holiday season
Last week I wrote a post about how to make your own speculaaskruiden, and of course I made them with a reason. Speculaas and gevulde speculaas are typical Dutch cake/cookies for the holiday season. Every Dutch person will connect these treats with "Sinterklaas", celebrated on December the 5th, where children get presents. Although these treats are nowadays sold year-round, you can notice that many supermarkets and other shops are selling a huge variety of these typical cookies/cakes. Although they call "Gevulde Speculaas" a cookie, it's actually more like a delicious cake filled with almond paste. There are usually almonds on top to give it that extra special bite as well.
Speculaas is delicious with a cup of coffee or hot chocolate drink
As it goes well with hot drinks, it's something that fits the winter season extra well. I have to admit that we bought the regular speculaas cookies in our local supermarket even in summer. Because it was one of these things I recognized from Holland, and always loved, they are delicious when you dip them in your coffee and melt on your tongue. On the contrary I didn't eat a "Gevulde speculaas" for years since I left Holland.
My first attempt of making gevulde speculaas
I didn't think much could go wrong honestly, but as it turned out, I was wrong. Although I measured every ingredient exactly as mentioned in the recipe, I had nothing like a nice ball of dough after mixing it up. I had something very sticky, which I barely could get off my hands, lol. But I found a solution to process it anyway, I just spread the dough in the bakeform with a spatula, then adding the filling and carefully try to add the top layer on top of it. At this point I was pretty certain nothing good could come out of the oven. This was the result:
As you can see it came out looking just fine. So at this point I gained a bit of hope that it would taste nice as well. I could only hope that the inside looked fine after cutting it. Once it cooled down, I decided to have a look:
Although not perfect, it was well baked. The only thing that wasn't right, was the fact that the bottom layer was thinner at some places compared to the top layer. Which I already expected, because I had the feeling I pushed a bit too hard when applying the filling and top layer. But I also have to admit that we all agreed it tasted better than expected!
My daughter liked helping, so we did another attempt
I actually bought all kinds of baking products so we can easily decide to bake cookies or other treats during the colder and rainy winter months. Often I don't feel like going to the supermarket to get one missing ingredient, therefore I decided this is the perfect thing we can do on those rainy days. I bought all kinds of spices to mix it up, and fondants, but also toppings and tools to make cookies and cakes. First I had to try gevulde speculaas again, as I couldn't really stand the fact that the dough wasn't great and that the filling was not really in the middle lol.. So let's do another attempt to improve that.
As you can see in the collage above, the dough looked just fine, and it also felt fine when I put it in the fridge. Unfortunately, after 3 hours in the fridge, I took off the foil and it was (again) quite sticky. I decided to just add a bit of flower on the outside and carefully put in the first layer without using the rolling pin (which would normally be needed). This time I made sure the bottom layer was a bit thicker, and I didn't push too hard when adding the filling and especially not when adding the top layer. Let's see how this one came out of the oven:
Much better in proportion, and it tasted wonderful. So there's actually no reason to think you messed up your dough as it says too sticky, as long as you make sure it gets baked long enough. There was nothing wrong with this gevulde speculaas it was actually delicious! Still I hope to have a normal dough next time I try, so we can finally start making funny cookies in different forms.
Recipe Gevulde Speculaas
You want to try this delicious treat yourself? Here's the recipe:
Ingredients:
- 300 grams self-raising flour
- 150 grams dark brown caster sugar
- 5 teaspoons speculaas herbs
- pinch of salt
- 125 grams cold hard butter
- 7-8 tablespoons of milk
- 250 gram almond paste
- 20 grams water
- egg + milk to cover the dough before putting it in the oven
- half almonds to garnish
Before you start, pre-heat the oven at 180 degrees.
Mix the selfraising flour, sugar and speculaas herbs together with the pinch of salt. Add the butter and milk as well, and start to knead the dough to a firm ball. Only add just a little milk at first and add little bits if needed when the dough is too firm. You can decide to process the dough immediately, but if you let it rest in the fridge for some hours or even the whole night, it will taste even better.
Divide the dough in two parts (one for the bottom the other for the top) and put the first layer in your baking form. You can either use a spatula (in case you have sticky dough like me haha) or a rolling pin to roll it to a nice slice of dough that you can put in your baking form. Then you take the almond paste and add 8% of the weight you use in water so you can mix this up to a softer filling. This way it can easily be divided on the first layer of your dough. Repeat the step of the first part of the dough to add the top layer. You can now add some almonds on top and use an egg mixed with milk to spread on top of the dough before you start baking it.
Put the form in the oven for 40 minutes at 180 degrees.
Enjoy!
~Anouk