I love that carrot cake is apparently newish in Japan? It's one of the best cakes and I'm glad the Japanese have learned it exists and is utterly delicious.
As fun as the last page funfact is, it's also wrong - speculoos is an alternate spelling of speculaas, but it's the exact same cookie!
Not the first time i see someone claim that though, I wonder where it originates from?
EDIT: I missed that there was another page of comments and that the uploader addressed this, whoops.
I checked and there actually is a difference in the spices used, but the name actually being different was created through marketing by Lotus Bakeries
rather than an organic historic development. Speculoos don't contain most of the spices usually in speculaas (just cinnamon) and add in caramelized sugar, but prior to Lotus rebranding then they were simply sold as speculaas. According to that link, VRT (Belgian Flemish public broadcaster) and the Belgian government's Flemish language advisory board both consider speculoos a brand name. Obviously, they aren't the arbiters of language use, but their insistence confirms speculoos didn't arise organically.
tl;dr speculoos do have fewer spices, but the name is marketing and not related to whether Belgium had historical access to the spice market
last edited at Dec 8, 2025 2:43PM