Libby Klein If you've ever had those tasty little Biscoff cookies, you know what Speculoos is. A spice blend of cinnamon, clove, mace, cardamom, and pepper. I bought this speculoos spice from King Arthur because I'm a spice hoarder. No really. That's the reason. When I see a spice I don't have I must buy it. You can discover a lot of fabulous recipes and new foods that way so I don't apologize for it. This is one of my new favorites. I took the recipe right off the King Arthur website and made it gluten free. You'll see in the photos that I made baked these cookies in two shapes. One that I painstakingly rolled into balls and pressed with my cookie stamps. And one where I dialed it in and sliced the discs with a knife. Both shapes are fantastically crisp, warm, and spicy. but we prefer the dialed in sliced little rectangles. I think because they're thinner. The cookie stamps are beautiful and would make lovely little gifts, although the dough for this recipe is rather firm so the cookies don't maintain their perfect circles the way my peanut butter or shortbread cookies do. One recipe suggested that these are better if stored for a few days to let the flavors mature. I don't know if that's true or not because they are very hard to stay out of.
Let me know in the comments if you hoard/super-collect anything. My confession is for spices, but I suspect many of you have an affinity for books.
Gluten-Free Speculoos Cookies
Ingredients:
8 tablespoons (113g) unsalted butter, room temperature3/4 cup (159g) light brown sugar or dark brown sugar, packed
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon cardamom*
1/2 teaspoon cloves*
1/2 teaspoon mace* (or substitute 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg)
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon*
1/2 teaspoon table salt
1 1/2 cups (180g) gluten free flour blend
1/2 cup (48g) almond meal
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 to 4 tablespoons heavy cream
*Or substitute 1 tablespoon Speculoos spice for the cardamom, cloves, mace, and cinnamon (which I did)
Directions
To make the cookies: In a large mixing bowl, beat together the butter, sugar, vanilla, spices, and salt.Stir in the gluten-free flour, almond meal, and baking powder, then enough of the cream to make a stiff dough.
Preheat the oven to 325°F. Lightly grease, or line with parchment, two baking sheets. Form the cookies as you like, and transfer to the prepared pans.
Gluten-free baker Poppy McAllister and her aunt Ginny are looking forward to a quiet, homey Christmas at their B&B in Cape May, but unfortunately, death isn’t taking a holiday this year . . .Ever since Thanksgiving, Poppy and her pals have been left with an unsolved mystery of the romantic kind. But at least this mystery isn’t the kind that involves murder. That all changes when the body of a fish supplier is discovered in the kitchen of her ex’s restaurant—and he’s frozen, not fresh.For once, it’s not Poppy who tripped over the corpse, yet she can’t escape being drawn in since the victim has a note taped to him reading Get Poppy. Figures—an engagement ring isn't labeled, but the dead guy is addressed to her. Now, while Aunt Ginny plans a tree-trimming party and pressures Poppy to decode a mysterious old diary, the amateur sleuth is asked to “unofficially” go undercover at the restaurant to help the police. Until then, the only crime Poppy had been dealing with was Figaro’s repeated thefts of bird ornaments from the tree; now it looks like it’s going to be a murder-y Christmas after all.
classes revolved mostly around the Culinary sciences and Drama, with one brilliant semester in Poly-Sci that may have been an accident. She loves to drink coffee, bake gluten-free goodies, collect fluffy cats, and translate sarcasm for people who are too serious. She writes from her Northern Virginia office where she serves a very naughty black smoke Persian named Sir Figaro Newton. You can keep up with her shenanigans by signing up for her Mischief and Mayhem Newsletter on her website. www.LibbyKleinBooks.com/Newsletter/
