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.

I make this quite frequently because it is easy and delicious.

Preheat oven to 375. Take off the excess outer skin of one bulb of garlic and chop off the very top. Place in an oven-safe bowl/dish, pour in 1/4-1/3 cup olive oil, cover (I use foil), and bake for 45 minutes.

It will be sizzling hot, so let it cool completely.

I love making pizza on Friday nights. I had some of my Whole Wheat Pizza Dough in the freezer, so I thawed it for a couple hours and made a quick pizza with some ingredients we had on hand. This is not one of my fancier pies, but it was really good.

Maple Curried Pecans, sweet Oregon pears, and curried croutons make this arugula salad one of my favorites.

There is a link to my Maple Curried Pecans for that recipe. For the croutons, I cubed 2 cups of some fresh italian bread and pan fried it on medium high in 1/4 cup olive oil and 2 TB Vietnamese Sweet Lemon Curry, 1/2 TB garlic powder, and 1/2 TB onion powder from Savory Spice Shop. After a few minutes, lower the heat to medium and stir somewhat frequently so they don’t burn. They should be done if 15 minutes or so, depending on how crunchy you like them.

For a dressing, I whisked a little maple syrup, walnut oil, and cider vinegar for a simple and sweet balance to the bitter arugula. Enjoy.

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.