Ingredients:

• 2 and 1/4 cups sifted whole wheat pastry flour
• 1 cup all purpose flour, sifted
• 3/4 tsp baking soda (1/2 tsp if at altitude like here in Boulder)
• 1.5 TB ground ginger
• 1.5 TB cinnamon
• 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves (I like to buy whole cloves and grind them by hand in a mortar and pestle)
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp sea salt
• 3/4 cup softened butter- I used freshly made butter from heavy whipping cream
• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed
• 1/3 cup un-sulfured molasses
• 1 large egg

I cut mine in fourths and rolled it out between two pieces of parchment paper. I used seasonal cookie cutters to make snow flakes.

Bake on parchment paper-lined trays for 10 minutes or so. Pay attention to the baking time since ovens vary. Remove them when the edges look done and your finger leaves a slight impression in the top but does not go through the cookie come out with batter on it. Remove the cookies from the tray and let them cool completely on a wire rack.

Prepare the icing with the wire whisk attachment to your KitchenAid and beat until the icing is almost too stiff to turn the whisk. Scoop it all into a plastic sandwich bag, cut off a corner, and squeeze out onto your cookies as you like. I spread mine out with a spatula.

Thanks to my sister, I have some snowflake cookie cutters to play with each winter.

This was my first month participating in Taste and Create, which pairs up fellow food bloggers to prepare someone else’s dish and blog about it. I was paired up with Love Big, Bake Often, and chose to re-create some pumpkin scones since it is indeed pumpkin season.

Here’s my adaptation of the recipe:

• 2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1/4 cup evaporated cane juice
• 1 tsp baking powder (1.5 for everyone not living and baking at altitude)
• 1/8 tsp baking soda (1/4 for lower elevation)
• a pinch of sea salt
• 1/2 TB grated fresh ginger
• 2 TB chopped candied ginger
• 5 TB butter, cold, cubed
• 1/2 cup buttermilk
• 1 TB maple syrup
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 cup pumpkin (from a real pie pumpkin that has been cut in half, seeded, boiled, and skinned. Trust me, it is worth the extra effort.)
• 1 TB heavy whipping cream
• raw sugar

Preheat oven to 400 and lightly butter a scone tray (if you have one- otherwise, a baking sheet will do just fine).

In a large bowl, combine the flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, fresh ginger, and candied ginger. Mix this evenly with a wire whisk or fork. In another bowl, mix the buttermilk, maple syrup, vanilla, and cooked pumpkin.

Cut the cold butter cubes into the flour mixture with two knives or your hands. The idea is you don’t want to melt the butter by squeezing it between your fingers. You want the butter to stay relatively cold, so using two knives keeps the heat of your hands away. Regardless, mix this well until the texture becomes crumbly and there are no large chunks of butter. Then add the wet ingredients, mix together, and knead a few minutes to work the dough.

If you have a scone pan, divide the dough into the individual sections. If not, place on a lightly floured cutting board, slice it into even pieces, and place on your cookie sheet. Brush the tops with cream and sprinkle with raw sugar. Bake until a toothpick inserted in a scone comes out clean.

If you’d like to make them sweeter, I made a sweet, light glaze to drizzle over them from 1/4 cup un-sweetend rice milk (use real milk if you have it), 1/2 cup powdered sugar, and 1 TB maple syrup. These scones didn’t really need a glaze, but the original recipe had one, so I made a dessert-like topping that came in handy when we ate them for a late night snack.

These cupcakes were so incredibly delicious, made with fresh carrots from the Boulder farmers market and crystalized ginger from Savory Spice Shop. This recipe make 12 cupcakes.

Cupcake Ingredients:

• 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 1/2 TB ground cinamon
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans
• 1/4 cup coarsely chopped crystalized ginger
• 3/4 cup evaporated cane juice
• 1/2 cup plus 1 TB walnut oil
• 2 eggs
• 2 cups grated carrots

This recipe has 3 parts: Pancakes, Ginger Rhubarb Sauce, and Sliced Strawberries.