Christmas baking is something wonderful and I love to try out new recipes every year. This year, Chocolaterie Genaveh contacted me to see if I was interested in doing a recipe with their Xmas spiced chocolate spread. As soon as I tasted it, I knew I would have to use it as a filling for my spekulatius cookies. The chocolate spread tastes of hazelnuts, spices and orange and it even has a light crispiness to it. It works perfectly in these cookies!
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250g butter, cold
140g icing sugar
300g flour
75g ground almonds
4 tsp spekulatius spice mix or Anne’s Sweet Spice
a pinch of salt
1 egg
2 jars Genaveh Christmas chocolate butter
icing sugar, for dusting
Makes 45
Cut the butter into cubes and put into a food processor with the icing sugar. Whizz until it resembles coarse breadcrumbs.
In a bowl, mix the flour, ground almonds, spekulatius spice mix and a pinch of salt. Add to the food processor with the egg and and whizz on a medium speed until it forms a dough. Shape the dough into two discs, wrap in cling film and chill in the fridge for at least 1 hour.
After 1 hour, preheat the oven to 170°C fan.
Dust your work surface with flour. Roll out one dough disk until thin, then cut out cookies with a 6cm star-shaped cookie cutter. Put on a baking tray. Cut out smaller stars from the middle of half the stars on the baking tray, and put the small stars on a second baking tray.
Bake the cookies in the preheated oven for 10 minutes, then leave to cool on a wire rack.
Repeat with the remaining dough until all the dough is used up.
Once the cookies are cool, dust the stars with the hole in the middle with icing sugar.
Spread some Genaveh Christmas chocolate butter onto the full stars, and top with the icing-sugar dusted stars, and fill the mini stars.
These cookies will keep in a tin for 3 weeks.
