Glazed Speculaas Biscuits

I'm officially off work until 2021 and it feels like I've been baking cookies for weeks now. It also feels like every day in the lead up to Christmas is practically filled with things to do. When really, what I'd really like to do is just be a bit selfish and cosy up, have a duvet day with snacks (of course) and just nap and watch the tv for a bit, y'know? 

I would also be pretty happy to devour this whole tray of speculaas biscuits. 

Every Christmas I will usually buy bags of them to eat over the festive time, but for the first time, I've made them and actually used a Christmas stamper (that I've had a few years). They don't even take that much prep work either, just chilling the dough, but you can always make these well in advance and freeze the dough to save time on the day. 

They are a simple cookie dough that, when baked, is deliciously soft and has that classic lebkuchen texture... that make you just want to keep eating them. It was hard to stop eating these and I already plan to spend the rest of my evening not devouring the whole lot. 

Have you tried making lebkuchen biscuits before? 

Glazed Speculaas Biscuits

Makes 12-20 (depending on the size)

Ingredients:

100g unsalted butter, room temperature

110g light brown sugar

120g treacle

1 egg yolk

250g plain flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

2 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp ground cinnamon

2 tsp mixed spice

2 tbsp coca powder

150g icing sugar

2 tbsp lemon juice/water

Directions:

1. In a large bowl, mix the butter, sugar, treacle and egg yolk together and beat until smooth. 
2. Then sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda, spices and cocoa powder into the mix and combine until a smooth dough forms. Once all the flour has disappeared, stop mixing as you don't want to overmix. 
3. Tip the dough out onto a floured worksurface and pull together into a round disc of dough, then wrap in cling wrap and place in the fridge to chill for at least an hour or you can freeze the dough at this point for up to 3 months. 
4. Preheat the oven to 180c/350f and line a baking tray with greaseproof paper. 
5. Roll out your dough on a floured surface, to about a 5mm-1cm thickness, you could go thicker if you like a thicker cookie. For these, they are about 5mm thickness (pound coin thickness), which means you get more cookies for this mixture. 
6. Cut out rounds to a size of your choosing, these are 7cm. Then, to imprint the design in these cookies, use either a cookie stamp or a glass, anything with an interesting pattern on that can make a decent indent. Press firmly into the cookie. Then transfer onto the baking tray, leaving an inch between each cookie to allow for spreading. Bake for 12-13 minutes. If you have a thicker cookie, it could be up to 16 minutes. 
7. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. In this time, make the icing for your biscuits by mixing icing sugar with either lemon juice or water. Whisk together until a smooth consistency forms. 
8. When the cookies are cooled, dip them one by one into the icing and then place on a wire rack to set. Repeat this step until all cookies are iced. You will need to leave these for a few hours, to allow the icing to set, it will typically take around 2 hours.