Windmill Cookies
(aka: speculoos or speculaas)
Ingredients:
3 cups all-purpose flour
1-1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter, softened
1-1/4 cups packed brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup sliced almonds
1-1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter, softened
1-1/4 cups packed brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup sliced almonds
Directions:
In a medium-sized bowl, mix the flour with spices, baking powder and salt.
In a large bowl, beat butter and sugar at high speed until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and mix well.
Stir in by hand half the flour mixture, then add the remaining flour and almonds. Mix with a wooden spoon or knead with hands.
Divide dough into four parts, wrap in plastic and refrigerate for several hours. (If you are using a mold, chill it as well.)
Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C) and grease two cookie sheets.
Remove one quarter of the dough from the refrigerator and flatten it with your hands. Oil your mold and lightly flour it. Using your fingers, press dough firmly into the mold. Trim any excess dough from the mold with a knife.
Transfer the cookies onto greased cookie sheets with a spatula, spacing about one inch apart.
Refrigerate dough trimming to be rerolled later. Lightly flour but do not re-oil cookie mold.
Repeat process with remaining dough. When cookie sheets are full, bake cookies for 20 - 25 minutes or until golden brown around the edges. Store in a covered tin.
In a large bowl, beat butter and sugar at high speed until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and mix well.
Stir in by hand half the flour mixture, then add the remaining flour and almonds. Mix with a wooden spoon or knead with hands.
Divide dough into four parts, wrap in plastic and refrigerate for several hours. (If you are using a mold, chill it as well.)
Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C) and grease two cookie sheets.
Remove one quarter of the dough from the refrigerator and flatten it with your hands. Oil your mold and lightly flour it. Using your fingers, press dough firmly into the mold. Trim any excess dough from the mold with a knife.
Transfer the cookies onto greased cookie sheets with a spatula, spacing about one inch apart.
Refrigerate dough trimming to be rerolled later. Lightly flour but do not re-oil cookie mold.
Repeat process with remaining dough. When cookie sheets are full, bake cookies for 20 - 25 minutes or until golden brown around the edges. Store in a covered tin.
Notes:
Dad just FaceTimed to share his windmill cookies with me virtually. I'd venture to say that the California central coast has never seen a fresh windmill cookie. Certainly not in the more than 30 years we've lived here.
He just bought the cookies, said Dad, and they were as fresh as they could be ... and that brought to mind one of my earliest childhood memories, with the aroma of fresh, baking gingery windmill cookies on a sunny day in Grand Rapids, Michigan sometime in the spring of 1959, when I was only three.
Funny, the things you remember.
My dad would take me for walks down Division Avenue, around the corner from our apartment on Brown Street. There was a Dutch bakery near the corner we always strolled by. Not a big-front-window-happy-fat-burgermeister-at-the-counter kind of Dutch bakery. This place made packaged cookies for the grocery stores. Windmill cookies. Dutch chocolate wafers. Rusk, even (only a few people will get that reference). You know: The Big Time.
I imagined giant conveyor belts moving tiny ginger windmills into the clear, shiny wrapping that was so fun to tear through. The whole front of the building was brick and tile, except for what (to my infant eyes) were tiny windows, at least six feet above the ground. Way too high for toddler-me to see the wonders that lay within.
It didn't matter that the windows were actually glass bricks and nothing could possibly be seen through them. Dad still lifted me up so I could smell through them. Big, deep sniffers. Big, strong arms.
Love that memory. It's a keeper.
(October 2017, Monterey County, CA)
He just bought the cookies, said Dad, and they were as fresh as they could be ... and that brought to mind one of my earliest childhood memories, with the aroma of fresh, baking gingery windmill cookies on a sunny day in Grand Rapids, Michigan sometime in the spring of 1959, when I was only three.
Funny, the things you remember.
My dad would take me for walks down Division Avenue, around the corner from our apartment on Brown Street. There was a Dutch bakery near the corner we always strolled by. Not a big-front-window-happy-fat-burgermeister-at-the-counter kind of Dutch bakery. This place made packaged cookies for the grocery stores. Windmill cookies. Dutch chocolate wafers. Rusk, even (only a few people will get that reference). You know: The Big Time.
I imagined giant conveyor belts moving tiny ginger windmills into the clear, shiny wrapping that was so fun to tear through. The whole front of the building was brick and tile, except for what (to my infant eyes) were tiny windows, at least six feet above the ground. Way too high for toddler-me to see the wonders that lay within.
It didn't matter that the windows were actually glass bricks and nothing could possibly be seen through them. Dad still lifted me up so I could smell through them. Big, deep sniffers. Big, strong arms.
Love that memory. It's a keeper.
(October 2017, Monterey County, CA)