Aha: this is the difference between speculaas and speculoos
We mainly know speculaas as the cookie we eat until we feel sick in December. Speculoos, on the other hand, lives in our memory as the quintessential Lotus product, which you can eat as a cookie or spread on your bread. We know the similarity: they’re both absolutely delicious. But what exactly is the difference between speculoos and speculaas?
Spoiler: it’s not just the 2 vowels at the end.
Spices vs. no spices
The difference between speculaas and speculoos lies mainly in the list of ingredients. Speculaas is made with all kinds of spices, which together are also known as speculaas spices. No speculaas baker uses a fixed recipe, but speculaas spice mixes generally contain cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, ground ginger, cloves and white pepper. Speculoos does not contain these spices.
A dive into history
Why does speculaas contain these spices while speculoos does not? For that, we need to dive into the history of baked goods. Speculaas is originally a Dutch product. In the past, the Dutch could import these spices relatively cheaply from their colonies. For the Belgians, these spices were incredibly expensive. But our southern neighbours did want to make speculaas, or at least something similar! So they developed a recipe that comes close to speculaas in flavour but contains no spices. Instead, candy syrup or caramelised sugar was used. The result: speculoos. In this case, SpecuLOOS means ‘free of spices’.
The most delicious recipes with speculaas and speculoos
Feeling hungry? As it happens, we have a whole collection of recipes with both speculaas and speculoos. Our speculaas favourites: Baileys speculaas waffle cookies (perfect for Friday afternoon!) and classic speculaas chunks. More in the mood for speculoos? We’re absolutely crazy about these recipes for speculoos tiramisu and speculoos mousse. Or this cheesecake with white chocolate and speculoos. You’ll want these treats all year round—you don’t even need it to be December.
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