It's getting to be the time of year when our thoughts turn to baking apple crisps and pumpkin pies. Often times recipes for those desserts just contain a reference to a spice blend designed specifically for those dishes. But what if you don't want to buy a little plastic container marked "Pumpkin Pie Spice" and already have your own store of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves and allspice? Nicole at Baking Bites has posted recipes for Pumpkin and Apple Pie spices and includes tips for tweaking those recipes according to your particular tastes. So go forth and bake for the holidays, knowing that your spice blends are unique and fresh because you made them. Make your own fall spice blends
It's getting to be the time of year when our thoughts turn to baking apple crisps and pumpkin pies. Often times recipes for those desserts just contain a reference to a spice blend designed specifically for those dishes. But what if you don't want to buy a little plastic container marked "Pumpkin Pie Spice" and already have your own store of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves and allspice? Nicole at Baking Bites has posted recipes for Pumpkin and Apple Pie spices and includes tips for tweaking those recipes according to your particular tastes. So go forth and bake for the holidays, knowing that your spice blends are unique and fresh because you made them. 
May is National BBQ Month and National Hamburger Month
Cupcakes, not for dessert (unless beef is your idea of a treat)
Because eating French Fries in the car is so tough
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
10-24-2007 @ 1:13PM
MJ said...
This makes alot of sense you can always mix your own spices. I keep the grinders from leftover spices and clean and reuse them. Love freshly ground pepper, nutmeg. I have notices that some of the built in grinder spices that you pay a fortune for cant be used again they made sure of it.Make sure you can unscrew the grinder top! also its cheaper to buy whole spices in quanities and they keep much longer than ground spices, which to me is overpriced for some spices that may be years old!!
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10-24-2007 @ 1:14PM
MJ said...
Also if you do have stale spices that you can no longer smell to keep from going out for tha one recipe. Heat it in a skillet for just a minute they burn easy, and you will have brought it back from the dead!
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10-24-2007 @ 10:53PM
BDW said...
You can buy whole spices at ethnic grocery stores for pennies on the dollar of the supermarket brands. I just paid 69 cents for 8 oz of black peppercorns, 79 cents for 12 oz cumin, and 99 cents for 8 oz cloves. Here I get them at Indian owned stores, out west usually Hispanic owned.
Also at the Chinese herb shops I can get pharmaceutical grade herbs, which can be much better than food grade; for instance I bought a piece of cassia (what we call cinnomon) bark the size of my kid's arm for two dollars and shared it out among my wife's relatives, it had a much more serious flavor than the little twigs we get elsewhere; and I have also found "smoking" grade whole cloves--we get, at best, third grade cloves here--the Indonesians smoke up 85% of all the cloves they grow in cigarettes.
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