The week before last I was in Amsterdam. I was mainly working but I did manage to visit a supermarket and stock up on some amazing Dutch delicacies. I have a bit of a thing about Speculaas biscuits (or Speculoos, depending on your country) and I have been hankering after a jar or three of Speculoos paste for ages although I hear you can buy it in Waitrose. So I came back with a suitcase full and OMG it is so tasty. It is like Nutella but make of ground up biscuits, I am not sure you are supposed to just spoon it out of the jar but yeah… it happened.
Anyway, to stop myself just scoffing the lot, I decided to make Speculoos/Speculaas cupcakes. I had seen a few recipes online (mainly in French) but in the end just made something up. They turned our pretty well:
So here we go (if you want to bake along at home)
Ingredients:
For the cake:
- 100g softened butter
- 150g Speculoos paste
- 200g sifted self-raising flour
- 200g soft brown sugar
- 3 large eggs
For the icing:
- 100g butter softened
- 100g Speculoos paste
- 400g icing sugar
- drop of milk (if needed)
To decorate:
- Speculaas/Speculoos biscuits
Method:
- Pre-heat the oven to 160c and line a muffin tray with about 12 large cupcake cases
- Cream together the butter and Speculoos paste until totally combined
- Add in the sugar and cream together until light and fluffy
- Add the eggs in one at a time mixing thoroughly after each one
- Add in the sifted flour and fold in until just combined
- Fill the cupcake cases about 2/3 full (I use an ice-cream scoop for this to make sure they are all the same size)
- Bake for about 18 – 20 minutes or until they are springy to the touch
- Allow to cool properly before icing or it melts or slips off
- For the icing, cream together the butter and Speculoos paste and add the icing sugar in batches. Add a drop of milk if needed to keep it smooth.
- Pipe on to the cakes and add a shard of speculaas biscuit to decorate.
So tasty. I also made Stoopwafel cupcakes! Post to follow.
Isn’t the icing to sweet for using 400g. or can it work with just 200grams but same consistency?
The icing is fine to me in terms of sweetness, but yes it is on the sweeter side. 200g would give you a different wetter consistency that may be difficult to pipe properly but worth giving it a go, you can always add more icing sugar if it doesn’t work.
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