Spend Your Salad Days Eating Cookies in the Morning
Spend Your Salad Days Eating Cookies in the Morning
Speculoos Spread in Brussels
My home in Brussels, Belgium stood five stories tall, a skinny tower of brick with a single room on every floor. I lived on the top. The kitchen lived on the bottom. That made breakfast a journey and a commitment.
Every day was the same. Boil water. Pour into mug. Stir in instant coffee. Sip and squirm at the bitterness. Remove bread from freezer. Slide slices into toaster. Unveil the speculoos spread.
Speculoos spread tastes like the spiced cookie equivalent to Nutella. It’s sweet and warm like the holidays; any sad piece of dry bread instantly transforms into a special treat, coating your mouth with cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, and cardamom. I thickly spread the stuff onto two or three or four or even five pieces of toast a day, depending on how many Trappist ales I had consumed the night prior. My lifestyle was that of a typical broke student studying abroad: trying to experience everything as fast as possible, test personal limits, and not spend any money before 9 pm. Luckily, my host family helped out with my budget: free breakfast and free snacks.
Of course, the bulk of that breakfast was speculoos spread, and those snacks were speculoos cookies. Sometimes, I’d eat speculoos spread for breakfast and call a handful of the cookies lunch.
Speculoos cookies are traditionally consumed around St. Nicholas Day, the Belgian gift-giving holiday, but the cookies are actually consumed year-round. Go to a cafe, order an espresso and find a little crunchy brown bite beside your cup. It was legitimately the first thing I ate when I landed in Belgium and the last thing I ate before I headed back to the U.S. a year later.
Now, I live in California and maintain a more health-conscious, less budget-conscious existence with no mention of the word “speculoos.” I do encounter “cookie butter,” though: Trader Joe’s ingeniously started manufacturing its own brand of speculoos spread, which quickly gained popularity with the stoner college crowd. A local doughnut shop even coats its faux-cronut with cookie butter, a best-seller.
But I don’t touch the stuff. I’m not against Trader Joe’s or brand loyal or anti-corporation. I regularly ate the mass-produced Biscoff brand, which has since made its way overseas. Speculoos just feels like it belongs in Belgium, like it belongs to my carefree Belgian life. Now, my mornings start with a far more reasonable single slice of maybe-pretentious avocado toast. But it fits.