Cookie butter is a decadent treat that’s gained a cult following in the United States over the last few years. It’s typically made from pulverized spice cookies, a fat (usually vegetable oil, sometimes condensed milk), flour, and a whole lot of sugar until it’s spreadable like nut butter. But before we ever snagged a jar off grocery shelves in the U.S., it was better known as speculoos spread and made from traditional European holiday cookies. So, how did cookie butter emerge from relative obscurity and become something we eat by the spoonful nightly on our couches?
Spice cookies, called speculoos in Belgium (and pronounced "speck-you-lows"), are a winter staple across Europe. From France and Northern Europe to Germany, Belgium, and stretching out to Poland in the East, everyone has a variation on a recipe that includes cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, and lots of butter. They’re a sign of the holiday season—some call them St. Nicholas cookies—and they're basically edible versions of the warm, fuzzy feelings we get when curl up near a fire in sub-zero weather.
But they’re not always relegated to the holidays. Sit down at any café in Belgium, and the cookie served along with your coffee will probably be a speculoos cookie, or some other spice cookie that tastes just like it.
Belgian company Lotus Foods is one of the largest commercial manufacturers of speculoos. And it was a partnership between Lotus and domestic airlines in the U.S. that first introduced Americans to the cookies. Idil Kozanoglu, direct marketing manager at Lotus Foods, dates the partnership back to the 1980s when an airline food broker went to a convention in Europe and tried the spice cookies with his coffee. He loved them and wanted to find a way to get them to the United States as soon as he could.
Delta signed on and began serving the cookies during the in-flight food-and-beverage service. Because speculoos would be hard for Americans to pronounce (and because the biscuits went so well with coffee) the cookies were rebranded as Biscoff.
Passengers loved the cookies. So many passengers called Delta to find out how to get them that the airline set up a mail-order business, a joint venture between Lotus bakeries and the airline’s cookie distributor. At this time—the 1990s—mail-order was the only way to get the cookies in the U.S. And so what started as a mom-and-pop business was soon sending over two million catalogs to U.S. subscribers who wanted more spice cookies.
It wasn’t until around seven years ago that Biscoff broke into U.S. supermarkets. Kroger was the first to sign on, but now Wal-Mart, Publix, Safeway, Walgreens, CVS, and 7-Eleven, among others, carry the cookies. “The rest is history,” Kozanoglu said.
Biscoff cookie spread was born out of a Belgian reality show called The Inventors, or De Bedenkers. Els Scheppers, a contestant on the show, wanted to know: Why weren’t Biscoff cookies spreadable? Kozanoglu at Lotus Foods explained, “It was a common practice in Belgium that parents would take a slice of bread, put butter on it, crush Biscoff cookies, and then add another piece of bread to make a sandwich.” Scheppers and her friends were already serving make-shift cookie butter to their kids, so when she finally got the platform to suggest Lotus Foods do something about it, she did. “She didn’t end up winning the contest, but Lotus bakeries approached her and got exclusive rights to create the Biscoff spread,” Kozanoglu said.
Lotus Foods introduced Biscoff spread to Europe in 2009 and then to the United States in 2011. It was a harder sell in the U.S., especially with Biscoff’s limited advertising and marketing budget. The only way people heard about the spread was through food bloggers and press releases. “We don’t have the budget of Kraft or Nutella. It was really our customers who tried it and wrote reviews of it. Also, recipes that were pinned on Pinterest were huge,” Kozanoglu said.
At the same time, Ben & Jerry’s and German grocery conglomerate Trader Joe’s were catching on to Biscoff spread, too. Peter Lind, flavor guru at Ben & Jerry’s, first tasted cookie butter about five years ago after a French woman suggested he try it: “She said, have you ever had speculoos? As it turns out I was not that familiar with it, but I did eat a speculoos-type of cookie when I was a child in Germany. Liking it was in my genetic makeup.” Once he finally tried it (in the Netherlands), he made sure he took it back to the R&D group at Ben & Jerry’s. “They were like, whoa this stuff is very good, we should put this in ice cream.” They didn't yet know how they would swing it, but they knew one thing: anyone who tried it loved it.
Which is why large American chains bought in. Ben & Jerry’s started developing Spectacular Speculoos, a flavor to join its new Cookie Core line, which came out last year. Trader Joe’s launched its version, called Speculoos Cookie Butter, including a full line of creamy, crunchy, and cocoa-swirl versions. Rebranded as cookie butter and now widely available, speculoos spread became a fun, new, and indulgent spread to eat straight from the jar with a spoon.
Kozanoglu said Atlanta, Georgia is its Biscoff spread stronghold, likely because the cookies are most popular there, too. (Delta is also headquartered in Atlanta.) Ben & Jerry’s says it has the biggest success with speculoos in urban areas on the coasts, like New York and Los Angeles. “It’s probably where speculoos is already hot. I think there’s just more exposure there,” Lind said. Whatever Ben & Jerry’s is doing with speculoos, it’s working. Speculoos Core flavors made it onto the company's list of top 10 best-selling flavors.
Belgians spread it on toast. Kozanoglu likes hers with green apples and tart fruits. Lind says there’s only one option: “A spoon!” He’s been asking people for two years how they eat it and, while he knows Europeans like it on toast, he still thinks “it sounds pretty bad." The non-Europeans he’s spoken to say, "I pretty much go in with a spoon and have a couple of spoonfuls then put it away for a while.” But Lind himself thinks big. (You know, the way we do.) “You know what’s really good?” he said, “You take a speculoos cookie and you make a crust like a cheesecake. Then you put a pint or two of speculoos ice cream in it. Now that’s a good pie.”