I love making these for Thanksgiving and Christmas. They are addictively delicious.

This recipe is for 1.5 cups of Pecans. It is easy to make a big batch, and the proportions can be tweaked according to taste. I always use the same ingredients, but make them slightly differently, by adding more or less of something. So, have fun with them and enjoy.

Melt 2 TB butter in a sauce pan. Add raw pecans and coat. Add 2 TB maple syrup and coat again. Then 1/2 TB each of curry powder, onion powder, and garlic powder. Mix well. Then 1 tsp sea salt, 1/4-1/2 tsp cayenne (depending on how spicy you like them). Mix this all well and spread a single layer on a baking sheet (covered in foil to make clean-up easy) and bake at 250 for 15-20 minutes. Let them cool and enjoy on their own, on vanilla ice cream, on an arugula and pear salad… there are many options.

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

I served these sprouts with my maple beer baked beans and some smashed, local red potatoes. Also, I had the added delight of some purple carrots, as you can see in the photo, to roast with the sprouts.

For the brussel sprouts-

Preheat oven to 375. Wash the brussel sprouts well- the sprouts I buy at the farmers market often come with lots of little bugs living in them. Slice them in half if they’re large (the size of a ping-pong ball or larger). In a large Pyrex baking dish, mix the brussel sprouts with:

• one yellow onion, chopped
• 2-4 carrots, chopped into 1/2 inch thick rounds (or a fancy shape, if you prefer)
• 1 cup veggie broth
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 1 TB horseradish powder
• generously grind some fresh black pepper