Speculoo Cookies

Speculoos: a famous french cookie made with cinnamon and allspice
Cookies are incredibly easy and delicious and can easily mold to the ingredients you have on hand.

For this recipe, there were a few challenges...I could not find allspice, powdered cinnamon or cloves.  I did find cinnamon sticks and whole cloves.  To use these spices i had to improvise.   I ended up grating the cinnamon with a cheese grater and made a tea with the cloves by boiling them in water.  The cookies turned out perfect with a bit of clove and the best cinnamon I have ever tasted. If you are making this abroad and do not have a cup measure, i just used a small bowl.  Be sure not to pack the brown sugar too tightly into the cup  The ratios still work for this recipe.

1/3 c butter
2 1/2 c flour
1 eggs
1 1/2 c brown sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp clove tea (boil water with cloves and let steep for 5 min)
1 tsp bicarbonate (baking soda)
1/4 tsp salt (2 pinches)
1 tsp vanilla

tsp= teaspoon

Preheat oven to 180 degree celsius/350 degree farenheit
Mix flour, spices, salt, bicarbonate in a bowl.
In a separate bowl beat sugar, eggs, butter, and vanilla until creamy, then add the dry ingredients.
Let sit in fridge until dough is firm and make into round balls.  Cook for 8-12 minutes.  It is very easy to cook these too long and they become very crunchy.  Keep a close eye on them in the oven.  When the edges are brown and they looked mostly cook take them out of the oven.

easter=chocolate

In Brazil, a country known for its production of cacao, dark chocolate is difficult to find.  I have tried several different varieties marked as 'dark' chocolate, none of which come close to dark in my book (<45% cacao content).  I have asked many locals about this phenomenon and they say that there is no good chocolate in Brazil because it is all exported out of the country.  Though I have yet to find any decent dark chocolate even in the Brazilian equivalent to Whole Foods (Perini), some imported chocolate can be obtained (for ~$6 or R$11 you can buy a bar of Lindt chocolate...or for a better deal for R$3, a bar of dark Toblerone... none of which are produced in Brazil).  I know there are some chocolatiers at the shopping malls and I plan to try them out...

One thing I am excited to try out is Suco de Cacao..cacao juice!  Apparently it tastes nothing like chocolate and comes from the fruit of the cacao.  The fruit has a while pulp that can be blended into juice, also inside the fruit are seeds that are roasted and eventually turned into chocolate.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theobroma_cacao

But one thing that is not lacking is milk chocolate....especially during Easter.  Like many other religious and mostly catholic countries, Easter is celebrated with chocolate eggs...giant, chocolate eggs that contain morenchocolate inside them.  Here in Brazil, there are no Easter bunnies or flying bells to deliver eggs (real or chocolate)... but children (and me) do love their chocolate eggs.