Fall Festival: Pumpkin Scones

 
Hi, everyone! I am Maggie from The Love Nerds, and I am so excited to be guest posting here at Domestic Bliss Squared – Aren't Jessica and Hilary just fantastic?!

It is officially fall, which means pumpkin recipes are EVERYWHERE! It can be really hard to decide which ones you are going to try before going into a pumpkin coma, but – I promise you – these pumpkin scones should be on your list. Too often, scones can be dry or even a bit stale. These are not that type of scone. They are moist with just the right combination of pumpkin and fall spices. I love them so much that I couldn't wait for them to be done and ate one pre-glaze. And you know what? It was still incredible! But if you don’t believe me, believe my own personal taste tester. My husband is not really a scone person, but this recipe might have changed his mind! I even caught him eating two a day. So I hope you will give these Pumpkin Scones a try and love them as much as The Love Nerds do!

INGREDIENTS:
SCONES 
2 c flour
1/3 c sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
6 tbsp cold butter (cut into 1 inch slices)
¾ c pumpkin puree
3 tbsp half and half
1 egg

PUMPKIN SPICE GLAZE (can be doubled if you like a lot of glaze – which I do!)
1 ¼ cup powder sugar
3 tbsp milk (I use skim)
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice

DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 425 and line a baking sheet with parchment paper

2. In a large mixing bowl, mix together the pumpkin, half-and-half and egg.

3. In your stand mixer bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and pumpkin pie spice. Then, add the cut up butter on top.

4. Using your paddle attachment, mix the butter and dry ingredients together. Work your way to medium speed. You want the butter to bread up into small little pieces. BE PATIENT! It might take a little time but the butter will break down into the mix. If needed, you can stop part way through, use your spoon to mix things around and break things apart, and mix again using the paddle attachment.

4. Gradually add the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients you set aside in step 2 – folding them together more than stirring. Make sure all the dry ingredients are moistened. You will need to get your hands dirty as you will want a nice dough ball to work with as we move forward.

5. Flour your surface- well!

6. Flatten and form the dough into a rectangle measured about 12” long by 4” wide and 1” deep. You do NOT want the dough to be too thin.

7. Using either a sharp knife or a pizza cutter, first divide this rectangle into three (so you will have 3 squares at 4” by 4”). Then, cut those squares twice making an X – it will result in 4 triangles. Don’t worry about perfection. It is okay if the scones are each a little different in size.

8. Put your scone triangles onto the parchment paper on the baking sheet and put in the oven for 15 minutes. You want your scones to be lightly browned. When done, move them to a cooling rack.

9. Mix together the ingredients for the Pumpkin Spice Glaze. Once the scones are cooled, you will want to glaze them. Put them back onto a sheet of parchment paper to save yourself some mess. Then either use a pastry brush to “paint” the glaze on top or use a pastry bag to zigzag the glaze on (which I did). Now, I don’t have a pastry bag kit yet, so I just poured the glaze into a ziplock bag, cut a tiny piece off of a corner, and zigzagged away. The key to using this method? Don’t stop!

10. Let the glaze dry (probably 30 minutes) and then serve away! My favorite way to enjoy one of these is with a cup of coffee in the morning with the windows open! I love the cool breeze and the sweet Fall smell. I hope you will give them a try and come check out my blog for other recipes, projects and ideas! You can find me at my blog or here on Facebook. Thank you again to Jessica and Hilary for letting me share and for hosting such a great Fall Festival!