Homemade Baking Spice Blends

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Baking spice blends are one of those thing that you only think about a couple times a year, and it’s a pain. You get it with the best intensions. You want to bake a pumpkin pie. You want to tackle that intricate crust for the apple pie you saw on Pinterest. You attempt a gingerbread house with the kids. You buy it once, it sits between the bay leaves and the whole cloves until you go to use it in a few years and see that it is expired. Such is the life and times of a spice blend. 

While store bought spice blends get the job done, I am always left disappointed when I find them hidden from the light of day in the back of the cubbard **  expired, after I had only used a single teaspoon from it. So I decided to make my own, and I will never buy store bought blends again.

** Side note: Cubbard is the Mainers way of saying a cabinet. I know that the English spelling is cupboard. I acknowledge this but choose to stay true to my Maine roots. Judge me if you will.

This took a lot of tasting, sniffing and reading the back of those forgotten jars. I started with gingerbread spice, because I thought it would be the easiest to dissect. I figured I would throw in some ginger and cinnamon and call it a day. That was not case. I made it at least a dozen times. Every time it seemed like it was missing something, and I was left disappointed. For me, it just wasn’t spicy enough. As I stood there riffling through my spices and trying to figure out what I was missing… there it was…. the secret ingredient innocently sitting on my stovetop where it was always been…Black. Pepper. 

I know, I know. Seems crazy but it elevates all of the other spices that make up my gingerbread spice. I feel in love with it.

Next spice blends on the docket were the pumpkin pie spice and the apple pie spice.  Now, one of the major differences between a pumpkin pie spice and an apple pie spice is the addition of cardamom to the apple pie blend, and cloves and ginger to the pumpkin. Other than that, the base is very similar.