Hello speculoos! What are speculoos? Speculoos are crisp caramelized cinnamon spiced shortbread. They originated from Belgium and are now being offered at Trader Joe’s.

I originally did not know what Speculoos were until I had heard about cookie butter from Trader Joe’s. Trader Joe’s cookie butter is a spread made out of the crushed Speculoos biscuits. It’s Trader Joe’s number one seller and is known worldwide. Folks as far as the Philippines are on the search for this cookie butter. The Trader Joe’s cookie butter comes in a creamy and crunchy version. The creamy is the original and the crunchy is the newest version that only came out this year.

After hearing about all the hype, reading news stories and blogs about it and seeing numerous instagram photos of cookie butter from all around the world, my curiosity was peeked. I went on the search for this cookie butter and tried finding it at various Trader Joe’s all around town. I first found the speculoos cookies but the cookie butter itself was very difficult to find! Various Trader Joe’s would run out early in the morning. Because of the high demand and limited quantities, some stores would not even put it out on the shelves and instead have it in their pit area for customers to request. I luckily found the hard to get cookie butter after awhile. I was so excited that I even wrote a yelp review about it!

It was the creamy version that I found first.

I honestly did not know what to expect. I had heard so much about it that I was curious to see if it lived up to the hype. My first try of the creamy cookie butter consisted of spreading it on some warm pan de sal at breakfast. I was instantly impressed. It was like peanut butter with a sweet touch. I could taste a slight hint of gingerbread in there as well. It was definitely creamy and a very nice spread for some hot bread fresh from the oven.

I liked the creamy version so much, that I wanted to try the crunchy version of the cookie butter next. Once again, finding the cookie butter was hard. It seemed only the creamy was available. After three weeks of finding the creamy, I found the crunchy at the same Trader Joe’s. Surprisingly, all the creamy cookie butter was gone on the day that I found the crunchy. The shelf was filled with lots of crunchy but no more creamy.

Once again, I tried it first on some pan de sal. I put a generous serving of the crunchy cookie butter on my breakfast bread and tried it out. I found it very similar to the creamy and honestly expected a little more “crunch.” There were some crunchy bits of biscuit in there but not a significant amount. The creamy and crunchy version in my opinion are almost one and the same. Both have the nice sweet taste to it.

After trying it out on pan de sal, I also tried the spread on the Speculoos cookies themselves. I found this very nice. It brought out the gingerbread and sweet cinnamon flavor out even more in the cookie.

I have also tried it on granola bars as well as Rice Krispie bars. The nice thing about cookie butter is it s a nice topping for almost anything! It’s like the extra cherry on top that everyone loves. I’m thinking of trying it on bananas and waffles as well.

Speculoos cookies and cookie butter from Trader Joe’s are my new favorite “it” food! It is definitely worthy of all the hype! Do give it a try and I hope it puts a smile on your face the same way it did on mine! 🙂