Vandotsch Archives - HodgePodgeDays

AD/Gifted. At this time of year, I absolutely love throwing festive spices at everything I eat and drink. I’ve got myself into a nightly mulled wine habit, but sometimes I crave something a little less alcoholic and something a little more comforting. Last week I baked some delicious Speculaas biscuits, with my order came a little packet of Speculaas spice to bake some extra biscuits with. I decided to use the spice to make some lovely Speculaas hot chocolate with it instead. What a stroke of genius that was!

The hot chocolate is filled with cinnamon, cloves and ginger – all of our favourite Christmas spices and topped with an over-generous and positively indulgent pile of squirty cream. It’s not an every day treat, but it really is a treat.

Christmas Drinks: Spectacular Speculaas Hot Chocolate

Essentially it is hot chocolate with a spoon of Speculaas spice in it, I’ve written the recipe below, but if you regularly make hot chocolate, make it your own way and whisk a dessert spoon of the spice in before you pour it into you mug. It really is brilliant.

Speculaas Hot Chocolate

Ingredients for one mug:
350mls of milk
3 heaped teaspoons of hot chocolate powder
1 heaped teaspoon of Speculaas spice powder
A huge pile of squirty cream

How to make your Speculaas Hot Chocolate:
Heat up your milk to drinking temperature. I microwaved my milk, but you can heat it gently on the hob if you prefer.

Stir though the hot chocolate powder and Speculaas spice mix, pour into a mug and top with squirty cream. I sprinkled a couple of pinches of the Speculaas spice on top of the cream to decorate it a little.

It’s best drunk in front of a roaring fire with some Christmas music playing in the background. It’s as simple and delicious as that! Merry Christmas.

Christmas Drinks: Spectacular Speculaas Hot Chocolate

If you enjoyed this, you might like this round up of Christmas drink ideas for all the family.

AD gifted. One of my favourite things to do during the run up to Christmas is visit the Christmas markets in Manchester. Along with copious amounts of mulled wine, I always seek out the stall which sells speculaas biscuits. They’re full of festive spice and they’re just delicious.

Speculaas is a type of spiced biscuit traditionally baked on or just before St Nicholas’ Day and around Christmas in many European countries. Speculaas are thin, crunchy, slightly browned biscuits which usually have an image or figure stamped on the front side before baking. The most common design I’ve seen is the windmill, which is why I often call them windmill biscuits.

Christmas Baking: Speculaas Biscuit Baking Mix

Vandotsch recently sent me a packet of Speculaas Baking Mix to bake with. The packet contained almost everything you needed to bake a batch of speculaas, just add butter! The instructions were really easy to follow, and they took just minutes to mix together. It’s important to have faith that the mix will turn into a decent dough once you start working with it. Do not be tempted to add water or milk or anything, this will just make the dough too sticky.

The Vandotsch Baking Mix contains all the lovely festive spices speculaas are known for. Packed with cinnamon, cloves and ginger, the biscuits are a real Christmas treat. I don’t have a windmill shaped cutter, so I used my Christmas tree cutter, which worked pretty well. I had some dough left over, so I rolled this up into balls, squashed them with the palm of my hand and made a few seriously delicious cookie sized biscuits, because they were thicker they were somehow even better.

Christmas Baking: Speculaas Biscuit Baking Mix

The Baking Mix is suitable for vegetarians and vegans (if made with a non dairy substitute). It is also free from artificial flavourings, colours or preservatives. They are gluten free too.

The pre-made Baking Mix costs £5.59 and there are options to buy the mix with a traditional style cutter too. These would make a lovely gift for a keen baker like myself. Vandotsch have all kinds of speculaas spice and baking mixes on their website, so it’s worth having a look to see if anything tickles your fancy.