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.