However, in the Low Countries it has become normal to eat speculaas all year round, especially with coffee or tea, or with ice cream.

Apart from Belgium and the Netherlands, it is also well known in adjacent areas in Luxembourg, northern France, and in the west of Germany (Westphalia and the Rhineland).

Over time, this term developed dialectal variations like speculacie and speculasie, in which later the ie-suffix was erroneously interpreted as diminutives —eventually resulting in the non-diminutive form we know today as "speculaas".

Speculoos, thought to derive from a Brabantian dialect pronunciation, omits the traditional spices in favour of caramelized sugar for flavour.

Speculaas likely originated in the Low Countries during the Middle Ages, when exotic spices arrived via expanding trade routes.