november adventures in baking

Crisp, cool weather arrived abruptly in Los Angeles over the weekend. It was a long-awaited but welcome cozy surprise, although it did make it pretty hard to crawl out from under the blanket cocoon on Saturday morning. Naturally, my first instinct was to bake, and not just anything - something that would fill our apartment with that smell of fall and anticipation of the coming Thanksgiving holiday (next week?!). After a Very Serious discussion with Scott of our baked good preference - him: muffins, me: cookies - I settled on these scones, with a recipe adapted from one I found on the King Arthur Flour website. They turned out pretty amazing, if I do say so myself. This was my first foray into the scone world, and after my breakfast this morning of a warmed scone and espresso, it certainly won't be my last.

you'll need...
2 3/4 c all-purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar (I used my unprocessed cane sugar, rather than regular white)
1 T baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground allspice
1/2 cup (1 stick) cold butter
2 large eggs
2/3 cup canned pumpkin (not pie filling - just plain old pumpkin)
extra sugar and cinnamon, plus about 2 T of milk for coating
optional, based on allergies and preference for health v. deliciousness
1 cup chopped pecans
1 cup finely chopped candied ginger (Trader Joe's has a really good option)
1 cup cinnamon chips


-Mix together all the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add the butter (I chopped it up a bit to make it easier, since I mix everything by hand) and incorporate until crumbly. Stir in optional nuts, ginger and cinnamon chips. Separately, whisk pumpkin and eggs together thoroughly. Add to the dry ingredients and stir until the mixture holds together.
-Flour a large baking sheet (you can also just line it with parchment, if you really have your shit together and have that sort of thing lying around the house) and scoop the dough onto the pan. Divide it in half, and shape into a circle. Pat down until the circle is about 3/4 to an inch thick. note: this will make a dozen reasonably sized scones - leave it as one or divide in thirds for larger or smaller if you like.
-Coat the outside of each circle with a little milk, and sprinkle with a bit of cinnamon sugar. Slice each circle into 6 pieces, pizza-style, and pull each little wedge out until there is about a half inch of breathing room for each.
-Chill the pan with the uncooked scones in the freezer for about a half hour while you preheat the oven to 425 F, then bake the scones for about 25 minutes, or until the edges look baked through, not doughy (you can also do the old toothpick cake trick-if it comes out clean, you're good to go). The edges will be golden brown. Best warm, great room temp as well. Store in an airtight container - you can also freeze these if desired.
Enjoy!