A friend recently asked me how I choose what to make on my adventures in baking. Well, occasionally I whip up family favorites or requests, often I play around with tastes and textures in baking experiments, and sometimes there are recipes for desserts and confections that have long been on my “to bake” list. And then — increasingly as my baking prowess swells — there are those fresh and boxed treats that I come across in my daily trips to local food shops and down grocery store aisles when I taste and peer at the item, inspect the food’s list of ingredients and say to myself: “I can make that… and without all those nasty preservatives and unpronounceables, at a fraction of the cost.” And so I was inspired to make biscotti…

Alright, we are now full-swing into a somewhat manic phase of holiday baking. And no plate of Christmas treats would be complete without gingerbread cookies. I was thinking outside the gingerbread “man” cookie cutter… I have instead been inspired by my recent immigration to the twitterverse and opted for “gingerbread tweets” in the shape of twittering birds (and other shapes, too).  This gingerbread cookie recipe is a spicy variation with the standard ground ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves, and adds a little extra edge with a subtle dash of piquant cayenne pepper.

When I think Christmas cookies, I think ginger crackles.

Oh, of course there are shortbread, sugar and gingerbread (wo)men cookies, too. Not to mention Swedish tea cakes… but ginger crackles are one of a few cookies that I only make during the holiday season. There’s something about their chewy, gingery bite, their crackled top and sugary sparkle, and the warmly fragrant aroma that fills the house when ginger crackles are in the oven — it just feels like the holidays.

Who knew one pie pumpkin from our Tap Root Farms CSA food box would stretch so far? Two batches of pumpkin scones, pumpkin pancakes, and now pumpkin pie, and I still have a cup of pumpkin purée left.

Save yourself three bucks and a trip to Starbucks, and instead invite some friends over for coffee at your house and serve up these outstandingly delicious cranberry-studded pumpkin scones using this recipe, modeled very closely after the exquisite (and hugely popular) pastry served up at your “local neighborhood Starbucks” (although I do believe that is, in fact, an oxymoron).