Prep time: 1hr to 12 hrs (depending how long you leave the dough to rest)

Cooking time: 10 minutes

Makes: approx 32 biscuits (approx 5cm across)

Sorry for the delay; I went on holiday last week so couldn’t post a recipe. This week, I am making Belgian inspired speculoos.

Belgium is also known for its sweet treats. The most well known is probably Belgian chocolate; did you know that the origin was a pharmacist who covered cough sweets in chocolate to make them tasty! After his grandson put crème fraiche in them instead, praline chocolates were invented (fact courtesy of yummy-planet.com). Other sweet treats from Belgium include Belgian waffles, cuberdon and speculoos.

This week I have chosen to make speculoos because I love a good biscuit to go with my coffee.

Speculoos are delicious spiced biscuits which are served in café’s with tea or coffee. You may have had one in the form of lotus biscuits. Now you can make your own. Authentic Belgian ones have patterns printed in them, but I could not find speculoos printers anywhere! So mine are plain.

Ingredients

• 250g plain flour
• 120g brown demerara sugar
• 85g margarine – I used vitalite
• 1.5 eggs worth of egg replacer
• 0.5 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
• 2tsp ground ginger
• 0.5tsp ground nutmeg
• apinch of ground white pepper
• 0.5tsp ground cloves
• 0.5tsp of ground cardamom (if you can’t find this, grind up the inner seeds of some pods in a pestle and mortar)

You will need
Speculoos molds / cookie cutters

Recipe

1.Make the dough:

• Add spices and sugar to bowl (or food mixer bowl)
• Add the butter and mix with a spatula (or beater if a food mixer) until combined

• Add the egg replacer and mix again until thoroughly mixed
• Gradually add the flour and baking powder until a dough is formed
• Flour and wrap the dough with clingfilm or in a container; refrigerate for at least an hour but for best results overnight. The longer you leave the dough, the more the spices will infuse their flavour

2. Cooking the biscuits:

• Preheat oven to 200C
• Roll out the dough on a floured surface to about half a centimetre thick
• Use a cookie cutter to cut out biscuits, (and make prints on them if you have a speculoos printer)

• Place the speculoos on a greased or lined baking sheet and cook for 10 minutes
• Let the biscuits rest on the tray for a few minutes before moving to a cooling rack

• Enjoy with a lovely cup of coffee or tea