Speculoos (Don’t Forget the Egg!)

French Fridays with Dorie

For someone who didn’t grow up with any “cookie traditions” I sure seem to baking up quite a few batches this week. I wasn’t in search of new traditions with that post but they do seem to be finding me. This cookie probably won’t become one, however as I just found it to be somewhat of a pain in the ass. Its my fault though. This particular batch had to be whipped up twice. Yup, I forgot the egg on the first batch. I did. Of course, I had some help in that omission. The egg was actually left out of the recipe by the publisher. I wonder if editors get fired for that kind of thing? Do you suppose the editor really loved that cookie and didn’t want the world to have the real recipe she he or she left out an ingredient? (Like my grandmother who never revealed the sugar she put in her spaghetti sauce.) You might be inclined to feel sorry for me here but the truth is that the publisher caught their own mistake and included a leaflet in the book calling attention to the error. My leaflet long ago went missing and even though our FFwD group leaders reminded us of the egg, I dutifully forgot it.

As I was making the cookie dough I wondered why it was so dry and mealy. Like crust. I thought I was being quite smart and clever to recall that my flour could have been dry and so I added about 1/4 cup cold water to make the dough. That is a bit much for just dry flour and that should have been my tip off but I kept going, rolled it out and had it chilling in the refrigerator when it suddenly dawned on me: The egg!!! Damn. I tossed the rolled out dough and started over. Poor me. Upon reflection I wish I hadn’t done that as I do think this dough, minus the egg, would make a delicious crust of some sort for some sort of custard pie or cheesecake of some sort.

Speculoos

Although delicious, this cookie is not my cup of tea even though it does go lovely with one. I don’t much like rolling out dough and using a cookie cutter is sort of a pain in the ass. Then there is the rerolling the scraps, chilling again, and re-cutting until the dough is used up. It is something of a pain in the ass and quite a bit time consuming. That said, they are incredibly delicious. If this sort of thing is the thing you like then you will like this sort of thing. My husband didn’t so I tried to entice him with Dorie’s idea of augmenting them with dulce la leche but that just made them ‘too sweet’. I thought they were incredible.

The turbinado sugar garnish was Greg’s idea. The dulce le leche was Dorie’s. It makes an already delicious cookie truly decadent.