Cooking With C.C. ~ Gluten Free Pumpkin Scones with Maple Nutmeg Icing

It's time for the 3rd installment of Cooking with C.C. On Tuesday, we made Gluten Free Pumpkin Scones with Maple Nutmeg Icing. My 34th birthday was on Tuesday and I chose to have this instead of a birthday cake. The recipe says that these scones will be similar to Starbucks Pumpkin Scones. We'll see at the end of the recipe whether that is accurate.


Here are most of the ingredients for this recipe. I think I hadn't gotten a couple out of the fridge yet. I'll spell them out as we go so you'll know exactly how much you'll need of everything.




This recipe seems to work best when you have 3 cooks in the kitchen. The 3 cooks present today are Damaris, Katie, and me! :)

You'll want to go ahead and pre-heat the oven to 350*.


In a bowl, combine 2 cups of gluten free all purpose flour,


1 tablespoon baking powder,


1/2 teaspoon sea salt,


1 teaspoon xanthan gum,


1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon,


1/4 teaspoon ground cloves,


1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg,


and 4 tablespoons brown sugar.


Whisk these dry ingredients together.


Add 7 tablespoons butter to dry ingredients. We found it best to slice the butter into smaller pieces.


Use the wire whisk attachment on your hand mixer to mix until the dough appears sandy in texture.


To the dough, add in 1/2 cup canned pumpkin.


In a separate bowl, use a fork to whisk one large egg until it is frothy.


Then add the egg into the large bowl.


Add 3 tablespoons sugar-free maple syrup into the large bowl.


In a small bowl, combine 3 tablespoons almond milk and 1/4 teaspoon lemon juice.


Whisk the almond milk and lemon juice together with a fork.


Add almond milk and lemon juice mixture to the larger bowl.


Use your hand mixer with the regular beaters on it to beat the batter briefly until the dough forms a smooth mass.


You do not need to beat the dough very long - just until it is mixed.


When you're finished mixing, you probably will need to use a rubber spatula to get the dough off the beaters.


Spray a baking pan (I think this is a 9X13) with cooking spray and spoon dough into pan. (You could also use a pie pan. We just didn't have one handy.)


Spray your hands with cooking spray (see, I did learn from my mistake when making the Gluten Free Rice Krispies Pumpkins) and then shape the dough until flat. Make sure and spread the dough to the edges of the pan.

Use a knife and cut the dough into pieces (I cut ours straight down the middle and then into 5 rows for a total of 10 scones - since we did ours in a rectangular pan, our scones are more rectangular in shape versus triangular). At this point, you have the option of either baking the scones in this pan or removing them and baking them in a separated fashion on a baking sheet. We chose to leave them in the rectangular pan.


Brush the tops of the scones with almond milk and then place them into the oven to bake. Bake until the scones are firm and slightly golden - roughly 20 minutes.


Allow the scones to cool (don't they look amazing!) while you make the icing.


In a clean bowl, combine 1 cup powdered sugar,


2 tablespoons sugar-free maple syrup,


1 tablespoon almond milk,


1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract, and a pinch of nutmeg.


Beat until smooth while adding more almond milk until the icing is creamy, but not too thin (I think we added 1/2 tablespoon more). Taste test and add more nutmeg if it needs it (ours didn't need it). Beat the icing for three to four minutes.


Spoon the icing over the scones (another option is to put the icing in a pastry bag and draw squiggles of icing on the scones). Spread with a rubber spatula.


Voila - pumpkin scones. Eat while warm.


Share with everyone in the house, including your 3 year old niece Lola who won't be satisfied with just one scone. Explain to her that there are only enough scones for everyone to have one. Then convince her that playing with toys in the living room is a perfect thing to do after eating a pumpkin scone.


Devour the scones so quickly that the pan is almost empty within an hour of baking. Decide next time to either make a bigger batch or bake when no one is home so you can have the entire batch of scones for yourself!

Now, as to whether these are like the Starbucks pumpkin scones, not quite in my opinion. There was something taste-wise missing, but I'm not sure what it is. I'll have to try to figure it out. Texture-wise, the tops were pretty much spot on, but the sides were much softer than Starbucks. I think it was because we baked it in a pan that didn't allow much space between the scones. Katie took a scone home to her hubby and she said that the sides firmed up between the time she left with the scone and the time he ate it later in the evening. That's a bit confusing to me because the recipe says to eat them immediately. I guess I'll have to make more and try different things to see what happens. You know that will be a huge sacrifice for me to bake and eat all those scones, but I'll do it for you, my loyal blog readers. :)

This recipe came from the Gluten Free Goddess. Check out her blog which is full of tons of great recipes. We did make a few edits to the recipe so if you want the original, you'll want to visit her website to get it.

Hope you've enjoyed this episode of Cooking with C.C. I'll be back next week with another gluten free pumpkin recipe. Enjoy!