Speculoos biscuit ice cream
Caramelised cinnamon biscuits blended straight into the warm base, with more broken in at the end. It tastes of caramel, cinnamon and baked dough.
Speculoos is a spiced, caramelised biscuit from Belgium and the Netherlands, traditionally baked for St Nicholas’ Day. Lotus Biscoff turned it into a global hit: it is among the world’s five largest biscuit brands, and in the first half of 2026 its volume and revenue both grew by more than 20 %. Ice cream makers noticed — 2026 round-ups have biscuit flavours returning to the freezer aisle in force. At home the flavour is easy to capture: part of the biscuits are blended into the warm base, making a home-made cookie butter, and the rest are crumbled into the finished ice cream.
Type: Classic cream ice cream · Servings: 8 · Difficulty: Moderate
Equipment
Ingredients
- 480 g whole milk 3.5 %
- 250 g whipping cream 33 %
- 30 g skimmed milk powder
- 120 g caramelised speculoos biscuits (about 15 biscuits — for the mix)
- 70 g granulated sugar (sucrose)
- 35 g dextrose (glucose powder)
- 1 g ground cinnamon
- 40 g caramelised speculoos biscuits (for topping or folding in at the end, roughly broken, into the finished ice cream)
Making the mix
- Crush 120 g of the biscuits to fine crumbs in a blender, or in a plastic bag with a rolling pin.
- Mix the milk powder and dextrose with the granulated sugar and the cinnamon.
- Heat the milk and cream in a pan to 60 °C, add the sugar and milk powder mixture and stir until dissolved.
- Add the crushed biscuits and heat the mix to 80 °C, stirring constantly. The sugar and fat from the biscuits dissolve and the mix thickens.
- Blend the mix thoroughly with a stick blender so no lumps of dough are left.
- Cool the mix quickly in a bowl set in iced water.
- Cover and age in the fridge for at least 4 hours, ideally overnight.
Method — Compressor ice cream maker
- Switch on the ice cream maker 5–10 minutes ahead so the bowl can pre-chill.
- Pour in the chilled mix no higher than the fill line (with a smaller bowl, churn in two batches) and churn for 27–37 minutes, until it has the consistency of thick whipped cream.
- Fold the roughly broken biscuits into the finished ice cream with a spatula.
- Transfer to a chilled container, press cling film onto the surface and leave to harden in the freezer for 2 hours.
Total time: 7 h 37 min
Method — Freezer-bowl ice cream maker
- Take the frozen bowl out of the freezer just before use, fit the paddle and switch the machine on.
- With the machine running, pour in the chilled mix — no more than two-thirds full; freeze the rest as a second batch.
- Churn for 20–30 minutes, until the ice cream thickens. There’s no point going longer — by then the bowl has warmed up.
- Fold the roughly broken biscuits into the finished ice cream with a spatula.
- Transfer to a chilled container and leave to harden in the freezer for 3 hours.
Freeze the bowl for at least 24 hours beforehand (until you can no longer hear the coolant sloshing inside). The mix must be thoroughly chilled.
Total time: 8 h 30 min
Method — Ninja CREAMi and similar machines
- Divide the chilled mix between CREAMi tubs, filling each no higher than the MAX line (a full batch makes about two standard tubs).
- Put the lids on and freeze on a level surface for 24 hours.
- Place a tub in the machine and run the Ice Cream program.
- Use a spoon to dig a well about 4 cm wide in the centre, all the way to the bottom, add the broken biscuits and run the Mix-in program.
- If the ice cream is crumbly or powdery, run Re-spin (many users add 1–2 tablespoons of milk first).
Programme: Ice Cream
A standard tub holds about 470 ml, a Deluxe tub about 700 ml. Don’t fill above the MAX line, and freeze it level — the machine doesn’t handle an uneven block well.
Total time: 29 h 13 min
Method — No-machine method
- Pour the chilled mix into a deep metal or glass container (a baking dish, for example) and put it in the freezer.
- After 45 minutes, stir the mix thoroughly with a whisk, spatula or stick blender, working the frozen edges into the centre.
- Repeat every 30 minutes, 4–5 times in all, until the ice cream is thick and smooth.
- Fold in the broken biscuits during the last stir.
- Leave to harden for another hour.
Without a machine you get more ice crystals and less air, so the ice cream is denser. Every stir breaks up the crystals, so don’t skip any.
Total time: 9 h 5 min
Stages
- Preparation
- 20 min
- Cooking
- 15 min
- Cooling
- 30 min
- Ageing in the fridge
- 4 h
- Churning
- 32 min
- Hardening in the freezer
- 2 h
- Total time
- 7 h 37 min
Plan: what to do and when
The whole recipe takes 7 h 37 min, of which 35 min is hands-on — the rest is waiting you can spend elsewhere.
The making itself fits into a single day — start at least 7 h 37 min before serving.
- Prepare the mix (weigh and stir the ingredients) — 20 min
- Cook the mix — 15 min
- Cool the mix down — 30 min
- Let the mix age in the fridge — 4 h
- Churn in the machine — 32 min
- Let it harden in the freezer — 2 h
Serving and storage
Serve with a whole biscuit stuck into the scoop and, if you like, a little salted caramel. Take it out of the freezer (−18 °C) and let it stand for 5–10 minutes until it scoops easily. It tastes best at −12 to −14 °C.
In a sealed container with cling film pressed onto the surface it’s best within a week; after that, ice crystals start to build up. Never refreeze ice cream that has melted. The broken biscuits soften in the ice cream within two days — if you want them crisp, add them on the plate instead.
Tips
- Crushed biscuits in the warm base make a home-made cookie butter. If you have ready-made biscuit spread, use it to replace 80 g of the biscuits — and cut the sugar by 20 g.
- The biscuits contain gluten and, in most brands, soya, so this recipe is not gluten-free. Gluten-free caramelised biscuits are available and work just as well.
- The cinnamon in the recipe only underlines the spice already in the biscuits. More than 2 g for this batch takes over.
Why it works
The biscuits bring fat, sugar and starch into the mix all at once — 120 g raises total solids by about 9 percentage points. That is why the recipe uses less granulated sugar and less cream than an ordinary cream ice cream would; even so, total solids end up around 41 %, close to the top of the range. Anti-freezing power (PAC) tells you how much water stays unfrozen at a given temperature — the higher it is, the softer the ice cream. Dextrose has almost twice the anti-freezing power of granulated sugar but is less sweet, which is why the two sugars are combined.
Related recipes
Cookies & cream
Vanilla cream ice cream packed with pieces of cream-filled chocolate biscuits.
Salted caramel ice cream
Dark caramel with butter and sea salt in a smooth egg custard. Bittersweet and addictive.
How we calculate the composition · What PAC and POD mean · Balance this mix in the calculator