Vegan Gevulde Speculaas
Vegan gevulde speculaas - this delicious festive Dutch treat consists of spiced cookie dough filled with almond paste. It is easy to make and addictively good! If you like almonds and spices then you will love these!
Servings 16 squares
Ingredients
Dough:
- 150 g (⅔ cup) vegan block butter (NOT the spreadable kind. I use Naturli Vegan Block) softened
- 125 g (½ cup + 2 Tablespoons) light brown soft sugar
- 4 teaspoons non-dairy milk
- ½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
- ½ Tablespoon ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger
- ½ teaspoon ground cardamom
- ½ teaspoon ground star anise
- ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- ¼ teaspoon ground cloves
- ¼ teaspoon ground allspice
- ¼ teaspoon ground coriander
- pinch salt
- 250 g (2 cups) plain (all-purpose) flour
Almond Paste:
- 200 g (2 cups) ground almonds
- 150 g (¾ cup) caster or granulated sugar
- finely grated zest of 1 lemon
- 2 teaspoons lemon juice
- 4 Tablespoons unsweetened non-dairy milk
- ½ teaspoon almond extract
To Finish:
- non dairy milk for brushing
- 16 blanched almonds
Instructions
- To make the dough, whisk together the butter, sugar and milk with an electric mixer until well combined and fluffy.
- Whisk in the bicarbonate of soda, cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, anise, nutmeg, cloves, allspice, coriander and a pinch of salt.
- Add the flour and stir with a spatula to form a soft dough.
- Bring the dough together into a disc, wrap and refrigerate for a couple of hours until firm enough to roll out.
- At the same time as making the dough make the almond paste - stir together the ground almonds, sugar, lemon zest and juice, milk and almond extract. Cover and refrigerate until needed.
- When the dough is sufficiently chilled, preheat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan/350°F/gas mark 4. Line a 20 cm/8 in square cake tin with baking parchment.
- Divide the dough into two pieces - one ⅔ rds and one ⅓ rd. Roll the larger piece out on a lightly floured surface into a square big enough to line a 20cm square tin, coming most of the way up the sides.
- Press the dough into the tin and up the sides, if it tears at all just press it back together with your fingers.
- Spread the almond paste evenly over the top of the dough and fold the edges over.
- Brush the folded edges with milk the roll out the other piece of dough into a 20cm square.
- Place the square of dough on top of the almond paste and press the edges together to seal.
- Brush the top of the dough with milk and decorate as you like with blanched almonds; I like to place one in the centre of each square.
- Bake for 30-40 minutes until nicely golden. Leave to cool in the tin for 20 minutes then carefully lift it out onto a wire rack and leave to cool completely.
- Once cold, use a sharp knife to slice it into squares and store in an airtight container.
Notes
- See post above for tips, details and step-by-step photos.
- As with all of my baking recipes I really do recommend using the metric measurements with a digital scale rather than the cup conversions. Cups are a wildly inaccurate measuring system and you will get far better, more consistent results using a scale, not to mention that it is also easier and less messy than cups!
- Instead of the individual spices you can use 1 ½ Tablespoons of spice blend such as speculaaskruiden, mixed spice or pumpkin spice.