Pumpkin Parade

So adding to yesterday's post about the pumpkin soup... I still had a lot of leftover pumpkin. I'd heard that Starbucks had good pumpkin scones so I went on a hunt to find a copycat recipe...when I came across one that is supposedly better than Starbucks pumpkin scones.

Um, I must say, its off the chart. I whipped these delicious flaky morsels up in less than 10

minutes and they take 15 to bake. I'm taking a few to my sister for a "happy house-warming

" and plan on doling out a few more to some special people...but then I'll certainly feast on more than my fair share. Here is the original recipe from pinchmysalt.com but I made a few changes. Here are the pumpkin lovelies I made:

So I made the scones the same as her recipe, but changed the topping, here's the scoop:

1 cup all purpose flour

1 cup cake flour

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg

1/4 tsp. ground allspice

1/4 tsp. ground ginger

6 tbsp. unsalted butter

1/3 cup pumpkin puree

1/3 cup fat free half n half

6 tbsp. brown sugar

1 tsp. vanilla

1/2 cup rough chopped pecans

2 tbsp. extra brown sugar

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Get out baking sheet and line with parchment. Cut butter into small pieces, put in small bowl and return to fridge to keep cool. In medium bowl, combine both flours, baking powder, salt, and all spices, whisk together and place in freezer or fridge to keep cool.

2. In a separate bowl, combine pumpkin, half and half, brown sugar, and vanilla. Whisk together well. Put in freezer to keep cool and take other two bowls back out. Cut the butter into the flour mixture with a pastry blender until it resembles coarse crumbs.

3. Get liquid out of freezer and pour into flour mixture all at once. Stir with wooden spoon until everything is just moistened. The dough will be very crumbly, this is the way it should be. Turn the mixture out onto the counter and push the pile together with your hands. it should stick together fairly well. Knead it just a couple of times until everything is together. Don't knead it too much or the dough will become sticky.

4. Pat the dough out into a rough circle 1" thick. Cut the dough like a pie into 8 pieces. Place pieces on the baking sheet so that they are not touching. Pat a small amount of chopped pecans onto the top of each scone, and then sprinkle with a light dusting of brown sugar. Take care not to spill the brown sugar, as it will burn on the parchment if scattered. Bake scones for approx 14-15 minutes, they should be light brown on the bottom.

Then... enjoy!