Speculoos Babka

Our friends invited us over this past weekend for dinner and I wanted to bring a dessert that would be easy to transport and delicious. As usual, I turned to Claire Saffitz and her first cookbook Dessert Person for help. I first discovered spéculoos cookies while living in France and was delighted when they made their way over to North America, most famously as the cookies handed out during Delta flights. Here, they’re branded as Biscoff cookies, sold by Lotus. Now, you can get Biscoff butter, a peanut-butter like spread made with the Biscoff cookies.

So this is exactly the filling in Saffitz’ spéculoos babka. It’s a sweet yeast dough filled with cookie butter mixed with a little melted butter, salt, and cinnamon. The loaf is covered in a crumble topping which didn’t really break up into crumbs and instead ended up looking quite unappetizing, in my opinion. Everyone else was polite about it, but I think it looks like some sad skin disease. Nonetheless, when sliced, it looked great and tasted even better.