Baking speculaas

After my first batch of home-made 'speculaas' spices was deemed successful by my critical family members (I made speculaas hearts for Sinterklaas) I've made some more and used that today for new speculaas cookies and for the weekly challenge with theme 'prints'.

If anybody wants to try: I used 6 cloves,  seeds from 2 cardamon seed pods, 1/2 a tablespoon of cinnamon, a knifepoint of five spice powder, pepper, powdered ginger and a pinch of nutmeg, powdered coriander and powdered cumin. Make sure that everything is mixed and powdered, use a pestle and mortar. I used this mix with 200 grams of self-raising flour, 100 grams of brown sugar, 100 grams of butter, a pinch of salt and 2 tablespoons of milk. Dice the butter in small pieces and add the other ingredients, knead to make a ball of dough. Best to pack this in foil and leave it to rest for a night in the fridge. Roll out the dough to a thickness of approx 0.2 inch, use your favourite cookiecutters and bake the cookies for 15-20 minutes at 180 C. There you have a real Dutch treat: Speculaas.

Thanks very much for your kind comments, stars and even a fave for yesterday's  Santa wine charm :-)