Friday Baking 1: Speculoos Spice

I was brought up in Belgium.  Everyone has distinctive smells and tastes that instantly link them back to their childhood.  Mine all remind me of very happy days: in summer the smell of the corn field opposite our house which we used to play in (don't tell the farmer!), in autumn the pungency of fallen leaves in the great forest, and in the winter the smell of our log fire filling the living room with glowing warmth.  All the year through the heady sugary delicious smell of street vendors selling waffel would make your mouth water at the first whiff and then there was the taste of a speculoos.  Speculoos or Speculaas are a spicy dark biscuit.  If there was such a thing as a national biscuit, the Speculoos would be Belgium's.  Consumed in droves in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany and throughout the year moulded into different shapes, they are little pieces of spiced heaven.  In winter we would have enormous Sint Nicolaas (the Belgian father Christmas) speculoos biscuits which were always the favourite item to find in our slippers on Christmas Eve. 

The nearest thing you can get to a bakery made speculoos biscuit in Britain are sold in little packets by Lotus.  They aren't quite the same but I still gobble them up greedily whenever one is presented as  a coffee accompaniment. 

In order to get a truly authentic taste you have to make your own spice.  It's a incredibly simple and  lots of fun.  You feel like an alchemist mixing the different amounts of lovely coloured spices as delicious aromas fill your kitchen.  And once you have the spice you can keep it in an airtight container in your cupboard ready to whip out at a moments notice to give your baking an extra flavour sensation.

Enough waffeling (sorry!), here is the recipe:

Speculoos Spice

1.  Carefully measure the following spices into a largeish bowl:

5g of ground black pepper

5g of ground ginger

10g of ground cloves

10g of ground nutmeg

32g cinnamon

2.5g ground cardamom

2.  Mix the spices gently together
3.  Pour into an airtight container - I use a freshly cleaned jam jar
4.  Put into your cupboard ready to use! (recipe for speculoos to follow)

NB. The spice mix can be used to flavour any cake / biscuit / baking recipe I often use it to replace cinnamon in recipes and it always works really well giving the resultant goods a certain je ne sais quoi!