John made these fantastic dutch spice cookies for Dave and Ginny's farewell drinks. They're going to New York, hence the DGNY decoration. Very creative.

John's recipe below:
Speculaas spice mix 6.5 g ground cinnamon 2g ground cloves 1.5 g grated nutmeg 1 g ground white pepper 2 g ground aniseed (from star anise) 1g ginger powder 1/2 g cardamon powder these quantities are critical and should be interfered with and changed at will in a wildly uncontrolled manner

Speculaas Biscuit mix 200 g pastry plain all purpose flour 125 g butter 125 g soft brown sugar 2 tsp baking powder 2 tbsp milk 2.5 tsp speculaas spice mix ( I usually put 6 heaped or even more) a few pinches of salt vanilla essence if you can be bothered. Almonds chopped up to roll the biscuits in if you can be stuffed. A bag of stuffing that has been bothered.

oven to 170 c sift flour baking powder salt and spices add butter in cubes and rub it in. add sugar and wodge it all together. Add in the milk, then run and hide under the table for exactly 2 and a half minutes. When you emerge roll the dough into balls a bit smaller than ping pong size.

hit some of the balls of dough around the kitchen ensuring to get a direct hit onto the neighbours wall through an open window

get two plastic tapered picnic cups(ones without handles). Cut one down so it is 2 cm approx deep. lightly dust the inside of this one with flour. lightly dust the out side of the other picnic cup with flour. Drop dough ball into cut down one and shout "DOUGHBALL!!" press the complete cup down onto the doughball untill it is a perfect disc.

tip out the newly formed doughdiskahedron collider onto your baking tray and realize you are the Bake King and that you are Baking awesome Speculaas

phone John urgently when they are about to come out of the oven