Spicy Sinterklaas Cookies

We lived in Germany for 18 yrs and visited The Netherlands several times. While this recipe may be for Sinterklaas cookues, they are not speculaas/spekuloos. Speculaas are a brown rectangular molded cookie and do not have nuts.

I checked and rechecked every ingredient and measured carefully but the resulting mixture was like sand, way too dry to pull together. I chilled it anyway to no avail. I ended up having to add almost another 1/3 c milk to create a roll-able dough. I looked back at the recipe again and it calls for only 2 tbsp milk! I wonder if anyone else tried this recipe and had the same issue? Otherwise, the flavor of the cookies was delicious and they did bake up well with the extra milk I had to add. (Added it at the end instead of in the beginning with the sugar so I was worried.) Did the recipe possibly get published incorrectly? Thanks to anyone for follow up comment(s). Happy St. Nicholas Day!! Good wishes for the holiday season and for the coming year.

Patsy, I hear ya'. I googled which to use and found recipes that used one or the other. I even saw a recipe that used both! I did come upon a recipe that reported to be an authentic, old fashioned recipe that used something called 'baker's ammonia' (ammonium bicarbonate) that pre-dated baking soda and has a different chemical make-up. This can be purchased on Amazon for about $10/lb. If you want to check out her recipe it's called Traditional Speculoos Cookies on The Daring Gourmet website. Good luck.

your directions call for baking powder, but your comment response to a reader baking soda, so is the ingredients baking powder or baking soda?

I have cookie molds that I have collected over the years... I can't wait to try this recipe

Do you use self-rising? Can I use it?