Monday, September 12, 2011

FFwD Rewind: Speculoos

This week's French Fridays with Dorie recipe is Cinnamon-Crunch Chicken, which appears to be some unholy union of speculoos (cinnamon cookies), creme fraiche, and chicken. I'll get to that later in the week. Since I couldn't find speculoos in the store, and it's a recipe from Around My French Table that the group baked last year, now seemed as good a time as any to catch up on the recipe (pg 406).

The dough came together in a snap. It's a standard case of mixing the dry (seasoned with cinnamon, ginger, and cloves) and wet ingredients separately, and then mixing the two together. Roll out the dough in two sheets and refrigerate for three hours. The most laborious part is trying to work quickly with the cursed cookie cutters. I hate making cut-out cookies. I don't move through the kitchen in smooth, steady, efficient movements, so my cut-outs end up misshapen, with many trips back and forth to re-cool in the fridge.

For me, these are not delicious enough to be worth the pain in the butt nature of handling cut-out cookies. I'd happily eat a plateful if someone else baked and served them to me with coffee, though.

Dorie proposes all sorts of ideas for these cookies. She says they work as sandwich cookies, filled with jelly or nutella or chocolate ganache. Oh, baby, those all sound good to me. I made a few with apricot jelly. Yum. They're better with the jelly than they are on their own.

Conclusion: Liked it, but not so much that I'd choose to make them over other cinnamon-ey treats.

I hope to return to Hawaii tomorrow. We all spent the weekend strewn about on couches, suffering colds in the petri dish known as my house. Blech. Fingers crossed that Charlie feels mostly better tomorrow, so a) I can go to the supermarket b) I don't have to watch Finding Nemo over and over and over and over again. I'm on the upswing (I was the first to get sick), but my fellas are still in sorry shape.

4 comments:

  1. Bleh! Sorry your sick! Here's me sending you a speedy recovery. Dr. Parsley Sage says eat all these yummy cut out cookies with nutella, apricot jam and marshmallow :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hope you all feel better soon. That's no fun.

    I too can't find speculoos (apparently they are considered Christmas cookies in Germany and will not be on supermarket shelves until at least November) and so I am sitting this week out. I figure I'll catch up with the cinnamon chicken recipe in November. I am curious to see how the recipe turns out for everyone though because it frankly looks a bit odd!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yeah, these cookies were tasty, but I had to make cookie sandwiches with Nutella filling to really enjoy them.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh, I had to come here and check your speculoos out first before I could comment on your chicken. Yep, it looks like you really DO need that cookie press! LOL. I'm loving those creative star and heart shapes though, and if I'd made mine thinner, I think it would be lovely to sandwich them too :-).

    ReplyDelete