Coo Coo for Cookie Butter and Cupcakes

Before I start this post I should say two things:

1) Sorry for the 2+ month-long break. Our bad. Shit got in the way (shit being actually having to work) — Won’t happen again.

2) I am the best sister ever.

Now that that’s out of the way — it was my little sister’s 19th birthday a few weeks ago. So obviously a significant birthday such as that deserved a significant treat.

This girl is OBSESSED with Speculoos, the dutch cookie butter. Like, I’ve seen her eat it straight from the jar. Remember that slogan “Coo Coo for Cocoa Puffs”? Cocoa puffs wouldn’t know this kind of “coo coo” if it slapped it in the face.  So obviously making Speculoos cupcakes was pretty much a no-brainer.

The problem with living in a gluten free house and trying to make something with Speculoos that everyone can eat is that Speculoos is inherently not gluten free. It’s literally a spread made from crumbled-up cookies…’nuff said.

So clearly I’d have to get a little creative if I was going to be able to make GF-Speculoos cupcakes. But alas, I’ve come to enjoy a challenge when it comes to baking, so I was all:

This recipe is not exactly easy and wasn’t a quick bake, but daaaayum they turned out pretty well. And I pretty much felt like a total balla when they came out and I could legitimately be like “I MADE EVERY SINGLE PART OF THESE. YOU AIN’T EVA TASTED ANYTHING THAT IS SO FROM SCRATCH!”

Sorry, too excited.

Without further ado, HERE’S HOW IT ALL WENT DOWN:

FIRST I had to make the Speculoos spice mix:
(from Gluten-Free Baking for the Holidays)

5 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp ground mace
1/2 tsp ground ginger
Pinch ground white or black pepper
Pinch of ground cardamom
Pinch of ground coriander
Pinch of ground or crushed anise seeds
Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg

Whisk together and then store in an air-tight container

SECOND, make the Gluten free Speculoos cookies:
(also from Gluten-Free Baking for the Holidays)

3 cups Gluten-free All purpose flour
3 1/2 tsp Speculoos spice mix
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups packed dark brownsugar

1 extra large egg, room temperature
tapioca flour, for dusting

Mix flour, spice, salt and baking powder together in a medium bowl.

In another bowl, combine butter and brown sugar. Add egg and stir until combined, then add flour mixture and blend well. Dough should be stiff but pliable. Divide in two, wrap in plastic wrap and let sit in fridge for about an hour (much longer and it’ll get too dry).

Roll out dough (a little at a time) between two sheets of wax paper so that it’s about 3 mm thick. Bake untilbrowned around the edges, 12 – 15 mins.

I decided to go as simple as possible as far as the cookie shapes — also it was like 9:30 when I finally got around to getting these little assholes in the oven and I had lost the ability 

to give anymore than a single fuck (and I had already put that one fuck towards actually caring enough to bake the cookies), so yeah. 

I did about 30 of the cookies in tiny little circle shapes to use as cake toppers and the rest I did in circles that were probably just a little bigger than your standard oreo — mostly because I was being lazy and wanted to have to cut out the fewest number of cookies without them being impossible to get off the counter.

THIRD, make the Cookie Butter Spread (adapted from the Passionate Baker):

250g of Lotus Biscuits/ homemade gf “Speculoos” cookies
1/4 cup of soft light brown sugar
150mls of full fat coconut milk
25g of vegetable shortening
2 teaspoons of lemon juice

Crumble up the cookies, combine them with an assload of brown sugar, some coconut milk, and a few tablespoons of shortening — you may want to add some more cinnamon to taste.

Using a food processor, blend together cookies and sugar. Add in coconut milk, shortening and lemon juice and beat until smooth.

I should note that yet again, I failed to completely read the recipe and decided to just throw it all into my food processor and try to beat the shit out of it instead of first mixing the sugar and cookies which would have actually made my life easier. So like, do that.

(Keeps in the fridge for up to 2 months)

FOURTH turn all of this into Speculoos Cupcakes
(adapted from The Diary of a Cake Maker):
makes about 15 regular-sized cupcakes

80g butter
140g Cookie Butter
190g brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
120g all-purpose gluten free flour (for flour’s like Bob’s Red Mill, you’ll need to add some Xanthan gum to avoid crumbliness — check the package for the right amount)
1 tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
60ml milk

*This part was tricky because I’m not used to weighing my ingredients, but I have to say, when working with gf flour it’s definitely the way to go since they’re not the same weight as regular flour

Pre-heat your oven to 350F

In a mixer (gotta love the Kitchenaid), blend butter, cookie spread and sugar until smooth and fluffy. One at a time, add the eggs. Mix well and then add vanilla.

In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt. Sift half the flour mixture into the cookie butter and sugar mix and mix well. Add half the milk and mix. Then add remaining flour, blend well, and add remaining milk.

Fill cupcake cases until they are about 2/3 full and bake for 20-25 mins.

FIFTH make the Cookie-butter frosting — I don’t have an exact recipe, I pretty much just go by taste/consistency. If you want them to be more cookie butter-ish then just add more cookie butter, it’s as simple as that.

1/2 cup of butter
1/3 cup of cookie butter
1 tbsp of coconut milk (I had leftover from making the spread, if you don’t have any handy, milk will do the trick too)
3-4 cups of icing sugar

Beat the shit out of the butter, add in cookie butter, beat more. Gradually add in icing sugar and then coconut milk. Keep adding icing sugar until it reaches your desired consistency.

Frost the cupcakes using an icing bag with a pretty large tip (the bigger, the better, amirightladies?), crush some of the remaining cookies in a bag, sprinkle over icing and press in one of the little baby cookies you made (if you haven’t eaten them all already).

TAH-DAH

It sounds insane (it kind of was), but if you spread it (heh heh, get it?) over a few days/nights/whatever it’s not that bad.

This is how you do 19.

All that being said, if you don’t need to make these badboys GF, don’t. Buy the Speculoos from your local fancy-pants store (for like $8/tiny jar…sucker) and skip right to the cupcake/frosting portion of the recipe.