Spice up the season with classic combo
Before there was pumpkin spice latte — and pumpkin spice Oreos and cereal and deodorant and pumpkin spice everything else — there was pumpkin spice. Or pumpkin pie spice, depending on who is talking about it and marketing it. Either way, this aromatic blend has been maligned and mangled until it’s often no longer recognizable or even good.
At this point, even the supermarket shelf jar of pumpkin pie spice seems like a purer distillation of the concept, so far from its origins as we now are. Those origins? As my colleague Maura Judkis pointed out a few years ago, there’s a compelling case to be made that “The call is coming from inside the house!” That would be a 1936 recipe for Pumpkin Spice Cake, which we updated for modern tastes and techniques.
The original and updated recipes have in common that they don’t call for a premade mix. Instead, you combine individual spices out of the pantry. With a pumpkin (pie) spice blend from the store, the work is done for
you. My advice: Take it a step above by making your own blend to have on hand. By doing so, you gain the convenience of a premade blend but one that’s fresher and more vibrant than what’s at the store, with plenty of room for personalization. Plus, you can make as much or as little as you want, likely with spices you already have, without buying yet another jar.
While some formulations call for a variety of spices in equal amounts, I prefer a more nuanced
approach that uses cinnamon as the backbone with ginger playing a strong supporting role. Based in part on recipes in The Post’s archives and from Cook’s Country, I include smaller amounts of nutmeg and cloves relative to the cinnamon and ginger (a 4:2:1 ratio), because I find they can easily overwhelm the other flavors, especially in store-bought blends.