Back in my pre-vegan days, I used to love a good cookie swap party. Now that I’m vegan and don’t have many vegan friends close-by, I’m bringing the cookie swap party to Keepin’ It Kind! Each day, for 25 days, one of my favorite bloggers will visit and share one of their favorite holiday cookies! That’s 25 Days of Cookies, my friends! Happy Holidays!
Since this is a Vegan Cookie Swap Party, I thought it only appropriate that the Vegan Cookie Fairy join us. Being the cookie monster that I am, I immediately loved Clemence’s blog’s name, but as I started following her, I became more and more in awe of this young blogger. Maybe it’s because I love all things Belgian (it’s one of my most favorite countries) or maybe it’s because Clemence is wildly talented, whipping up some of the tastiest desserts I’ve seen, but I love her blog and I am so thrilled to have her here today!
The 6th of December is a magical day in the Low Countries. On the eve of this day, children all over Belgium and the Netherlands place a pair of shoes in front of the hearth. If they have been naughty children, they will wake up to find their shoes filled with coal. But if they have behaved all year, in the morning they will find their shoes filled with sweets.
This day is known as Saint Nicholas’ Day. It is probably our favourite holiday after Christmas; even when I was a teenager, I still received sweets. St Nicholas’ Day always fell in the middle of exams time in Belgium, but much to every pupil’s delight, there would be a clementine, a piece of chocolate and a huge slab of Speculaas waiting for us on our exam tables. We were even allowed to eat our sweets whilst sitting our exams.
The story goes that Sinterklaas, or St Nicholas, the patron saint of children, travelled to Spain and returned to the Low Countries on a steamship laden with mandarins, which he offered to all the children. I presume his ship was also laden with spices — ginger, cardamom, nutmeg, cloves, and the key ingredient in these cookies, cinnamon — and that that is how these cookies were born.
Speculaas cookies are so popular that they are available year-round in a multitude of shapes. They have even been transformed into a spreadable paste, which is often called ‘cookie butter’ in the USA. I call these cookies, but they’re not chewy at all; Speculaas are meant to be so crunchy they will snap under pressure. They are delightful dipped in tea or hot chocolate.
Ingredients
- 8 parts ground cinnamon
- 2 parts ground nutmeg
- 2 parts ground cloves
- 1 part ground ginger
- 1 part ground cardamom
- 200g (⅞cup, or ¾ cup + half of ¼ cup) vegan butter
- 200g (2 scant cups) plain flour + extra
- 200g (1 + ¼ cup) soft brown sugar
- 2 tbsp Speculaas spice mix
- 1 tbsp ground flaxseed
Instructions
- Pre-heat the oven to 180° C (356° F). Line two baking trays with baking parchment (cookie sheets).
- By hand or with a standing mixer, cream together the vegan butter and soft brown sugar. Add the vanilla paste, ground flaxseed, baking soda, and finally, the plain flour. Mix until the dough starts to look quite uniform.
- Lightly flour a clean surface. Turn over the dough onto the floured surface and knead by hand for a few minutes, or until the dough is pliable, smooth and even.
- With a rolling pin, roll out the dough to 3-4 mm (0.12 inches) thick. Cut the dough into shapes and place your cookie shapes onto the lined baking trays. Knead the leftover dough strands into a ball, as before, and roll out thinly once again. Cut the cookie shapes; repeat the process until the dough is exhausted.
- Bake the cookies for 16-18 minutes, depending on the size of your cookies. Keep a watchful eye on your oven; you don’t want to take out the cookies too soon, or they’ll be chewy, but leave them too long and they will burn to a crisp.
- Cool on a wire rack for at least 15 minutes. The cookies should be nice and crisp, and a deep nutty brown colour.
Notes
* Speculaas cookies are traditionally baked in a carved wooden mold. I do not possess one so I simply cut the dough with a cookie cutter and baked the cookies on baking parchment (a cookie sheet). The result is almost exactly the same.
* I learned the original recipe for the spice mix from The Dutch Baker’s Daughter. However I omitted the white pepper; to me, the cookies still taste exactly as I remember them from my childhood.
* The cookies need to be 3-4mm thick; in inches, this is 0.12, which I realise is a bizarre number. Suffice to say that these cookies need to be quite thin, though not wafer-thin.
Clémence Moulaert (Clem) is the vegan baker and cook behind The Vegan Cookie Fairy. She became a vegan in March 2011, and soon after began experimenting with vegan baking to satisfy her sweet tooth. She tested her recipes on her friends, who started calling her the vegan cookie fairy—and so the blog was born. It reunites Clem’s greatest passions—food and writing. Clem is currently studying a postgraduate degree in Stirling, Scotland, where she lives with her cat
Sarah
These cookies sound amazing and I can't wait to make them this weekend! How much vanilla paste and baking soda are in the recipe? They were left off of the ingredient list.
The Vegan Cookie Fairy
Oops, I did apparently forget them. 1 tsp vanilla paste (but you could use 2 tsp vanilla extract if that's all you have) and 1/2 tsp baking soda. I find that if you add too much baking soda it comes through the other flavours quite sharply. Thanks for pointing this out! xoxo
Anna {Herbivore Triathlete}
These sound amazing! I love speculaas, such a delectable flavor. I love the fact that during exams the students were given these cookies along with other treats. I bet that made exams just slightly more bearable.
Thanks Kristy for introducing me to Clem aka The Vegan Cookie Fairy!
Annie
…with a big cup of steaming chai tea…Perfect!
Shannon
I love speculaas. Especially when the cookies are shaped like tiny bunnies. Too cute!
Vanessa Ritchie
I experience significant frustration with vegan recipes online. The writers are often verbose and preachy and the norm for recipes is that they are poorly written, lack crucial steps, or cater only to people with specialist pantries. The message reinforced by all this is that veganism is finicky, expensive and hard work: hardly good news for ordinary folk wanting to be kinder to animals.
I tried making this recipe as it is written and the ingredient amounts were all wrong. Equal parts flour, sugar and vegan butter gave me a dough with a consistency of royal icing - a soft gooey mess. I suppose this is not too surprising considering that two of the ingredients are not listed in the recipe ... one has to scroll down to the comments section to get ingredient amounts (together with an "oops") for the vanilla and bi-carb soda. To salvage my cookie dough I turned to a non-vegan shortbread recipe for assistance on the ratio amounts of flour to shortening and sugar.
The CORRECT ratio of ingredients are as follows: For 200 grams each of vegan butter and sugar (creamed together) you will need between 280-290 grams of flour. I used in 280 grams of all-purpose flour and added a tablespoon of rice flour just to give the biscuit extra crispness (I left out the flaxseed). Once I got the ratios right the dough was perfect and I was able to proceed with kneading it. After kneading, you should keep your dough refrigerated to make it easier to work with as the vegan butter is a lot looser and contains more water than its dairy equivalent. If it gets to room temperature it goes soft and becomes difficult to work with. I rolled my out onto a sheet of baking paper that I was able to slip in and out of the fridge as needed.
So proceed with caution when using this recipe as you are doomed to fail if you try to make it as written. I think the only thing about the above recipe that is really useful is the spice mix, which is really wonderful. I made the cookies for my family they were a big hit with everyone, young and old.