Chocolate and speculoos at the Gare du Midi

I made an astonishing Nutella and hazelnut cheesecake at the weekend. Just astonishing. A Nigella recipe, I think from her most recent Italian cookery book? One of those cheesecakes you wonder whether it is a cheating recipe because it just seems too simple to taste authentic. But it tastes quite fantastic. Cream cheese, Nutella and vanilla filling; digestive biscuit, Nutella and butter base. Yum, yum. These days my weekend baking tends to result in one cake, and a batch of something that can be divided into around 24 portions. This time it's chocolate and speculoos squares. These things are made with ingredients sourced entirely from the Gare du Midi in Brussels, en route to the Eurostar departures lounge. Seems like a weird place to go foodie, really. But if you are a baker, particularly a chocolate baker, anywhere in Brussels is sheer heaven. Gare du Midi does a fab job of titillating your chocolate tastebuds into chocolate overdrive even as you fish for your passport in your overloaded bag. Just out of the Metro station there is a chocolate shop selling high end pralines. Godiva, Neuhaus...they have "curated" (I cannot believe I am even using this word to describe a range of chocolates - this tells you more than almost anything else could about my obsession with the stuff) a range of pralines that would make you weep. I travel to Brussels a lot these days and on this particular trip my eye is caught by a tub of Speculoos paste. What is it? You mean you haven't tried this stuff? Speculoos is a kind of spiced shortbread. In Belgium, they make practically everything from the stuff. Speculoos biscuits, yogurt, ice cream, cakes and chocolate. I buy the paste, bring it home, put it on the table, look at it, think to myself, if it were a jar of peanut butter, what would I do with it? I get out a square tray, scrape out the Speculoos paste, add butter and soft brown sugar to it, and press it into my tin. Then I take the other bag out of my wheelie suitcase, empty out a box of pralines, take several deep breaths, and put them in a bowl over a saucepan of boiling water so that they melt into a maddeningly fragrant, marbled pool of chocolate. I pour this carefully over my speculoos crumbs so that it covers them completely. Put the tin in the fridge. Take it out an hour later, cut up the block into squares, et voila. Gare du Midi on a plate.