Pumpkin Scones

I've been obsessed with pumpkin scones ever since Whole Foods started selling them in the fall several years ago. I bought one every chance I got and tried to make them at home, but they were never the same as the marvelous ones at Whole Foods. Once the holiday season ended and spring was in the air, the pumpkin scones would disappear and I would pine for them for the rest of the year. (If anyone thinks I am kidding, just ask Drew.)

Then the worst happened. Whole Foods changed the recipe and added raisins. I HATE raisins. I hate raisins on par with my hatred of tomatoes. It is a horrible thing to do to a grape. They ruin everything. The worst is when you have this marvelous, meaty savory dish and bite into a raisin and it's icky, bitter, raisiny nastiness just ruins the dish. But I digress.

So ever since the raisin disaster, I've been trying doubly hard to find a good pumpkin scone recipe. I thought I may have found one on the Joy of Baking site http://www.joyofbaking.com/index.html. It is run by this woman who just loves to bake. Then she posts her recipes for everyone to try.

I found the pumpkin scone recipe this week and thought I would try it this morning. I assembled all the ingredients. I even had some roasted pumpkin seeds to sprinkle on top, thinking the salt would be a nice touch with the subtle sweetness of the scones. Then I proceeded to leave out the sugar. When you leave the sugar out of a scone recipe, you get biscuits. They actually taste pretty good, but it certainly wasn't what I had in mind.

You can't really taste the ginger nor the vanilla, which is good, because that would have been really weird. But you can't taste the pumpkin, either. I don't know if I need to use freshly roasted and pureed pumpkin rather than the stuff in the can or if the pumpkin just needs to be increased. I'm going to keep trying and experimenting and if I come up with a good recipe, I will post it here. Of course, I will try this one again with the sugar this time to see if that brings out the pumpkin flavor.

I've decided these would be good with maple syrup and bacon, or maybe that maple cured bacon and perhaps just not on top, but cooked, diced and baked in. Everything is better with bacon, after all. My neighbor is going to put citrus butter on the ones I gave to her.