Pumpkin Breakfast

Add pumpkin to just about anything
for tasty, healthy, autumn cuisine.

It's that time of year during which pumpkin puree is combined with most anything to give snacks, beverages, and meals an autumn flair. I do not mind this pumpkin craze, because for a month or two, I can add a healthy ingredient to indulgent foods and my family excitedly devours the festive cuisine. If I simply announced I added antioxidants, B-complex vitamins, calcium, potassium, and fiber to my famous, buttery biscuits, my family would suddenly be too busy for the most important meal of the day. But when they smell the aroma of pumpkin biscuits wafting throughout the house, and then enter the dining room and see a plate of festively orange, soft, fluffy biscuits, they grab a plate and sit for a few minutes.

One can of pumpkin puree not only provides our family enough pumpkin for a pile of pumpkin biscuits, but also for a batch of pecan pumpkin pancakes. 

Pumpkin Biscuits
2 cups self-rising flour
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1 stick softened butter
1/3 cup milk
3/4 cup pumpkin puree
3 tablespoons honey
1/2 a stick of melted butter to brush over biscuits before and after baking

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Combine the flour, nutmeg, cinnamon, and ginger in a bowl. 

Using a fork, cut in the softened butter until the mixture resembles small pea gravel. 

Make a hole in the center of the dry ingredients.
Combine the milk, pumpkin puree, and honey. 

Add the milk mixture to the hole in the middle of the dry mixture all at once. 

Thoroughly mix everything together by hand.
Turn the mixture out onto a well floured surface. Knead a few times with floured hands. It may be a bit goopy at first. That's okay, it should be. 
Pat out or roll out the dough to about 1/2-inch thick. 
Cut your biscuits. You can use a biscuit cutter, a drinking glass, cookie cutters, or anything shaped the way you want your biscuits shaped. Just generously flour whatever you use to cut them out.

Arrange the biscuits next to each other on a baking sheet or stone. They should be touching.
Brush the biscuits with melted butter. 

Bake on the top rack at 450 degrees until the biscuits rise and edges become golden brown. This can take 10 to 25 minutes depending on the size of your biscuits and the type of oven.
Remove from oven, brush with melted butter again.

Let the biscuits sit on the stone or pan for about 10 minutes before serving.

You will have leftover pumpkin puree. Use it to make pecan pumpkin pancakes the next day or, if you have a big crowd, in addition to the biscuits. For that recipe, CLICK HERE to visit The Courier-Tribune online, where it was published on September 26, 2014.

Micki Bare, mother of three, wife, daughter & writer is the author of Thurston T. Turtle children's books. 

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Copyright 2014 Michele Bare