Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Speculoos (Biscoff) Cream Puffs

I cannot believe that I never posted about Speculoos before! Back in 2010 when Mike and I traveled to France, we were addicted to this creamy rich speculoos spread (called Biscoff in the USA) that has the consistency of peanut butter but tastes like spiced cookies and condensed cream.  We used up all the bottles we brought home from France, and last year a friend bought us a bottle of the creamy spread and the crunchy one!
We then found out that Trader Joe's now sells a similar product (not that we have a Trader Joe's in our neighborhood yet-that's happening on September 6th).  And then I saw it in a recent Wal-mart advertisement. So I guess Speculoos may become a mainstream food item similar to Nutella.
Mike has been eating speculoos on plain white bread, so it got me thinking-I can replace the peanut butter in a recipe with the speculoos spread and voila, a Speculoos-flavored treat.

Cream puff shell batter.
 I just searched online for an easy cream puff recipe. I think I followed a recipe on the King Arthur Flour website.
Pate Choux (Cream puff shells)
Here's my Speculoos filling.
If you want the recipe I used here it is:

Ingredients
2 cups whole milk
1/2 vanilla bean, scraped* 
4 Tablespoons cornstarch
1/2 c granulated sugar
1/4 t. Salt
2 eggs
4 Tablespoons butter
3/4 cup Speculoos
Simmer the milk and the vanilla bean.  Whisk together the cornstarch, sugar, salt and eggs.  Temper the egg mixture with the warm milk by slowly whisk a third of the hot milk into the egg mixture. Then pour the warmed egg/milk mixture back into the pot with the remaining milk. Bring to a full boil for a few seconds and then remove from heat.  *Add vanilla extract (1 t) in at the end if you do not have any vanilla beans.  
Place in a container and cover with saran wrap. Chill until slightly solidified in texture and then place in a pastry bag and pipe into cut cream puff shells. 

Mike and my friends really enjoyed these cream puffs. The filling was delicious and I'd definitely try to flavor more desserts with speculoos.  

2 comments:

K and S said...

that looks good! I'm gonna try biscoff when I get back to Japan, since they have it there.

genkitummy said...

Kat-I hope you like it. Everyone that we've introduced the biscoff spread to really enjoyed it. Hopefully you'll like it too!