It’s a good way to shake up the fruit scone world.

CARROT CAKE SCONES

2 c. flour

5 T. cold unsalted butter (vegan or dairy)

1 T. baking powder

1 t. cinnamon

1/2 t. ground ginger

1/4 t. cloves

1/4 t. nutmeg

pinch salt

1/2 c. milk (vegan or dairy)

1/4 c. maple syrup

1/4 c. golden raisins

1/4 c. grated carrot

2 T. shredded or desiccated coconut

Cinnamon sugar for dusting prior to bake or vanilla glaze for after bake

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix dry ingredients in a mixing bowl. Add cold butter in chunks. Mix with pastry blender or forks until butter breaks down into pea gravel size chunks. Add milk and maple syrup. Stir with wooden spoon until it just starts coming together. There should still be some flour floating around the edges of the bowl. Do not overmix. Add coconut, carrot, and raisins. Gently fold a couple times.

Lightly flour a work surface. Pour contents of bowl onto surface. Gently work into a scone log. About 9” long x 3'“ish inches wide. Go along length of log and gently flatten with heel of hand to about an inch thick. Use a bench knife to angle cut a row of alternating triangles along length of dough. You should get about 8 scones. Place on a parchment lined baking sheet. Dust with cinnamon sugar if you’d like. Bake for 15-20 min. or until lightly browned on ridges and bases. Scones should make a hollow thump when flicked.

Let cool a bit prior to glazing and/or putting in your face.

Not too sweet, not too dense. A slightly fermented depth and a little crunch at the top. A good way to use some starter without committing to a full loaf of bread. Whole wheat flour makes it hearty enough to get you through the morning. Studded with berries, fresh or frozen, a cup of coffee on the side.

BLUEBERRY SOURDOUGH MUFFINS

1/4 c. butter (dairy or non)

1/2 c. brown sugar

2/3 c. sourdough starter (should be active and kicking. If sluggish- feed a couple times and let it sit out on the counter for 12 hours or so. I try to pull and feed my starter 24 hours before baking)

1 egg (chicken or flax)

1/4 c. milk (dairy or non)

3 oz. plain yogurt (dairy or non)

1 c. all purpose flour

1/4 c. whole wheat flour

2 T. cornmeal

1/2 t. baking soda

1/2 t. baking powder

1/4 t. cinnamon

STREUSEL

1/4 c. all purpose flour

1/4 c. granulated sugar

1/4 t. cinnamon

2 t. canola oil

Brown sugar for tops

Set oven to 400 degrees. Beat sugar and butter in mixer with paddle attachment until it looks like really light refried beans going up the sidewalls of the bowl. Add egg and milk and mix for 15 seconds or so. It should not be all the way mixed. Add yogurt and starter and mix for another 10 seconds on medium low. Add dry ingredients and mix on medium low until it just starts to come together. You’ll want to be careful not to overmix. Whole wheat flour has a habit of developing its gluten to a tough and chewy consistency if taken too far in the mix for quick breads like this. Add berries and mix for a max of 4 seconds.

Mix all streusel ingredients with a fork in a small bowl or jar. You may need to drizzle more or less oil to get the right slightly wet and sandy consistency.

Scoop batter into prepared muffin tins. Top with streusel. Then a little pinch of brown sugar on top of that. Sounds like extra, but it’s worth the tiny caramel crunch it adds. Bake for 15-20 minutes. Brown sugar should be dark and the muffins should be domed and biscuity browned and firm to the touch.

Kind of sweet, kind of salty. Kind of crunchy, kind of chewy. These little drop cookies only take 6 ingredients, 1 bowl, and 10 minutes to bake.

PB&J DROPS

1 c. flour

1/2 t. baking soda

1/2 c. peanut butter

1/2 c. maple syrup or agave syrup

1/6 c. extra virgin olive oil

Trickle of milk (dairy or non)

Jam (dollops of)

Turn oven on and set to 365 degrees. Add peanut butter, syrup and oil to a mixing bowl. Mix by hand until the ingredients start to blend. If using natural PB, this can take some time. Fear not- you don’t need an entirely smooth mixture. Once you add the flour, it will start to come together.

Add flour and baking soda to the wet ingredients. Mix with wooden spoon until it starts to form clumps that are still a little dry. It will seem like it wants to form a normal looking cookie dough at this point, but will seem a little too dry to successfully do that. This is where you’ll want to trickle in a couple teaspoons of milk and mix slowly until you’ve got the right consistency.

Stop about here in your mixing

Keep adding a little by little amount of milk until you’ve got this

Once you’ve got a nice droppable dough you can stop mixing.

Scoop onto parchment lined baking sheet. These cookies bake off quickly if you use a smaller scoop (1-2 tablespoonsish). Once scooped onto sheets, gently press to a peanut butter puck. Not skinny, but not an intact ice cream scoop. Use your favorite thumb to press into the center of these pucks. Add about 1/4 teaspoon of jam into your thumb basins.

Bake for about 10 minutes or until the bottoms and edges look like they have changed to a darker brown. The cookie may seem a little soft but they will crunch up during cooling. The jam will spread out and bubble up during baking. They calm down as they cool. Now you’ve got PB & J in drop cookie shape. Who needs sandwiches?

We used to make a chocolate cherry bread at one of the bakeries I worked at. I think it was only available on Fridays. People would wait out the door of the bakery to buy their weekly chocolate cherry ration. It was a nice, mellow, slightly rye-based bread that we used for a gruyere dill version on a different day of the week. They were both a combo that warranted a line out the door. This cookie is my homage to the Friday bread and bakery days I miss.

CHOCOLATE CHERRY COOKIES

2 oz. butter (vegan or dairy)

2.5 oz. brown sugar

1 oz. granulated sugar

1 egg (flax or chicken)

2.5 oz. flour

1 oz. rye flour

Scant teaspoon baking powder

1/4 t. baking soda

1/4 t. cinnamon

pinch salt

2 oz. dark chocolate chunks or nibs

1 oz. dried cherries

Maldon sea salt for tops

Preheat oven to 365 F. Cream butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Scrape bowl. Add egg and gently mix. Add dry ingredients (not including chocolate, cherry or flaked salt for tops). Mix until almost fully incorporated. Add chocolate and cherries. Finish mix for another couple seconds.

Use ice cream scoop to form cookies. Put on prepared cookie sheets and gently press tops down into fat disc shapes. Sprinkle a tiny bit of flaked sea salt on the tops.

Bake for 15-20 minutes until light brown with firm edges.

Here is the ultimate tool kit for any home biscuiteer.

top to bottom, left to right

Sturdy Wooden Spoon

Bench Knife

Fluted Cutter

Pastry Blender

Small Scoop

Add good butter and a hot oven and you are on your way to building the best biscuit.

These are great with or without jam baked in the middles. If you omit the jam prior to baking, it can always be added after. These also make good foundations for an egg, bacon and cheese sammie. A pastry blender is your best friend for biscuit making. If you don’t have one in your baking quiver yet, check out the post called, “The Home Biscuit Builder’s Starter Kit”.

BAKING POWDER BISCUITS

2 cups flour

2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

pinch salt

6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter cut into their tablespoon wedges (if veganizing these, I recommend Myoko’s or Trader Joe’s Vegan Buttery Spread)

2/3-3/4 cup milk (buttermilk, whole, oat or oat with a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar- this makes a good vegan buttermilk substitute)

Optional: jam

Optional optional: cinnamon sugar

Set oven to 425 degrees.

Always mix by hand. In a bowl, add the dry ingredients and the butter rectangles on top. Use a pastry blender to cut in the butter until you have pea size flour covered butter gravel. Add the milk. Start with only 2/3 cup and see what this does. Gently mix with a wooden spoon. Do not overmix it or incorporate everything yet. If the mixture looks dry, add some more milk. If it seems like it will be easy to manage on a floured surface, it is probably the right amount of liquid to dry. Finish incorporating until almost mixed. Dump onto floured surface. Pat around on the floured surface to finish the mix and flatten by hand to 3/4”-1” thick slab.

Use a biscuit cutter to get your biscuits cut. With waste dough from initial cuts, just gently coax back together in rough slab form. Resist the urge to knead back together and smoosh back out into slab form. Repeat this up to one-two more times. After that, just form waste dough into hand shaped quasi biscuits. The more you work and re-work, the less flaky the biscuit.

If you are adding jam prior to baking you can use the back side of the jam scoop to form a little basin in each biscuit. If it is sticking, lightly flour the back. Add your optional jam and optional optional cinnamon sugar dusting now. Pop into the oven for 15-20 minutes until lightly brown and a little taller than they were.

Eat them as they are, slice them open to add some eggs or jam or honey butter.

I’ve always loved gingerbread anytime of the year. Anything with cinnamon and cloves and ginger is ok with me. I have been wondering how to turn the flavors into a breakfast pastry for a while. This is probably just the beginning of the experiment and is as basic as it gets, but sometimes simple is THE solution. These are a gingerbread-like flavor quick bread with more puff to them thanks to the addition of baking powder. Like any good northerner, I studded the batter with golden raisins. Topped off with an easy cinnamon streusel and you’ve got a good December morning muffin.

GOLDEN GINGERBREAD MUFFINS

Batter

3/4 c granulated sugar

1/4 c molasses

3 eggs (chicken or flax)

1/3 c oil (canola, sunflower, veg) or melted butter)

2/3 c milk (cultured dairy, reg dairy or non-dairy)

1 1/2 c all purpose flour

2 t baking powder

1/2 t baking soda (make it an ample scoop)

pinch of salt

2-3 t ground ginger

1 t cinammon

1 t cloves

A couple handfuls of golden raisins

Streusel

1/3 c all purpose flour

1/3 c brown sugar

1 t cinammon

1-2 T oil or melted butter

Set your oven to 350 degrees F. Prepare muffin tins.

Make the streusel. If you are using butter option, be sure to start the melting process now. Add the flour, sugar and cinnamon to a small bowl. Drizzle melted butter or oil on top and mix with a fork. You want a slightly wet and crumbly mixture. Add more oil or butter to achieve your desired streusel consistency. A good streusel rule to follow is that you should be able to pick up a bit with your fingers. It shouldn't feel like soggy sand or completely dry sand. It should be something in between. Set aside.

Mix wet ingredients by hand until just blended. Add all of the dry ingredients except for the raisins from batter list to the wet. Stir paying careful attention to edges of bowl and do not overmix. One way to avoid overmixing is to use a fold method to get the ingredients friendly with one another. Spend your time spinning the bowl with one hand as the other scrapes along the outer edge of batter along the bowl’s edge. At the end of one rotation of the bowl, bring the hand with the fork or spoon into the center of the bowl with a healthy scoop of the batter. Repeat this motion until the little flour pockets are mostly smoothed out. Add your raisins and give a couple more folds.

Distribute into prepared muffin liners filling about 3/4 of the way full. Sprinkle on your streusel.

Bake for about 20 minutes. The tops should be browned and when you press the tops there should be some sponge to it and they should bounce back. They are good warm, but the ginger flavor develops as they cool. Up to you.

Pumpkin and chocolate always belong together.

PUMPKIN CHOCOLATE CHIP MUFFINS

1/3 c. granulated sugar

1 T. molasses

1/4 c. vegetable or canola oil

1/4 c. milk (dairy or non-dairy)

1/2 c. pumpkin puree

1 c. flour

1/2 T. baking powder

pinch salt

1/2 t. cinnamon

1/4 t. nutmeg

1/4 t. ginger

1/4 t. cardamom

1/4-1/2 c. chocolate chips

brown sugar for topping

Mix sugar and oil with fork. Add pumpkin, molasses, and milk and mix again. Add dry ingredients. Don’t overmix since pumpkin is a natural binder and can make the gluten chewy if overworked. Fold in the chocolate chips.

Scoop out using an ice cream scoop into prepared muffin tins (makes about 8). Top with a pinch of brown sugar. Add to a 400 degree oven and bake until mostly firm and caramelized a little on tops. About 15 minutes or so.

Let cool and enjoy.

Light creamy orange in color and taste. Good with sweet orange glaze on top, or broken open and smothered in jam.

ORANGE DROP SCONES

Scones:

3 oz. unsalted butter

2.5 oz. granulated sugar

pinch of salt

1/4 teaspoon orange extract

1/2 teaspoon orange zest

Egg yolk

12 oz. flour

3/4 oz. baking powder

Optional add-ins: pecans, chocolate chips, dried cranberries

Glaze:

1/2-3/4 cup powdered sugar

Juice from one tangerine (a couple of tablespoons of juice)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Cream butter and sugar in a mixer with paddle attachment until light and creamy. Scrape and add zest, extract, and egg yolk. Gently mix for a couple of seconds. Add dry ingredients alternating with milk being careful not to overmix. Add in your optional add-ins at this point…right when the batter looks just about mixed. Use an ice cream scoop to drop scones onto a parchment-lined baking sheet.

Place into preheated oven and bake until golden brown. 10-15 minutes depending on your oven. Make the glaze if you’d like and wait until scones are cool to drizzle on top.

I can’t remember where the recipe came from, but I have been making it for a decade and it always wins.

NUTELLA FUDGE

1 14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk

8 oz, bittersweet or semisweet chocolate chips

1 cup Nutella

3 tablespoons unsalted butter (cut into manageable and meltable hunks)

coarse sea salt

Grease an 8x8 baking pan. Line with parchment saddle (this is where two ends of the parchment paper ride over two sides of the baking sheet, if you didn’t know).

Mix first 4 ingredients in a double-boiler-approved bowl. Put over a double boiler. Make sure the water is not touching said double-boiler-approved bowl. Melt over medium heat while stirring. Stir slash melt until smooth.

Turn off heat, remove bowl, and wipe the bowl bottom clear of water because water and chocolate never mix and we are not chocolate philistines. Pour mixture into the parchment saddle situation. Smooth with handmade wooden dough scraper, if you do not have a handmade wooden dough scraper, a spatula or something will do. Put into fridge. Then, lovingly check in on it like you would with a small, sleeping child or baby animal every 20 minutes. At the 3rd check in, you can sprinkle some sea salt on top. If you are very fancy and important, you will be using Himalayan pink salt. Make certain the salt is coarsely ground. Fine salt will just absorb into the fudge attempt and then this whole thing has just been pointless.

Continue to chill for 2 hours at minimum. When fully set and sparkling with coarse pink salt, pull the chocolate square from the pan using the saddle as dandy handles. Hot knife the giant square into much smaller, bite-sized fudge squares. Eat them all, pack them into ski pants, give to the neighbors, or store in an airtight container for the apocalypse.