I Stole My Secret Pumpkin Spice Ingredient From Nigella Lawson – It's Addictive

I’m on a bit of a pumpkin kick at the moment. Not only does it make my protein puddings more moist, but it also changed my banana bread for the better.

But come on – what is Romeo without Juliet, the Traitors without Claudia Winkleman, or pumpkin without its special seasonal spice?

We’ve written before at HuffPost UK about how Starbucks creates its iconic PSL flavour, though they only shared how to create a syrup, while I’m after a dry spice mix for my cookies and porridge.

Still, I’m not as easily defeated as all that. I’ve since created a pumpkin spice recipe I use all the time, and which has gotten rave reviews in both cookie and blondie forms. 

And after some tinkering, I found that the best version contains an unexpected ingredient: black pepper.

Why you should add black pepper to pumpkin spice

If you look up pumpkin spice recipes, you’ll usually see ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves in the mix. 

Ginger stuck out to me. It’s such a cold-weather-baking staple: it features in German Lebkuchen, classic gingerbread and good mulled wine. 

And since making my own gingerbread last year, I’ve stuck to a rule – where there is ginger, you should almost always add a crack or two of black pepper. 

Traditional Swedish gingerbread, Pepparkaka, literally translates to “pepper cake”. And while most recipes don’t actually include the ingredient, some include it for a welcome, warming kick.

Pfefferneusse cookies also rely on the flavour. Once you’ve tried the combination, you won’t be able to keep the spices apart: black pepper also stuns in Jamaican ginger cake, and none other than Nigella Lawson uses it in her “luscious” gingerbread.

I find it brings a zippy, tangy deliciousness to the heavier ginger flavour, a bit like chilli on dark chocolate or lime in a coconut curry. 

And since my pumpkin spice recipe relies on a healthy serving of ginger, I figured I’d bung it in there too – it made it taste so much more festive and added a depth of flavour nothing else brought to the mix.

Pumpkin spice recipe

I like to make a lot of pumpkin spice mix at once because, in my opinion, it’s most delicious when you grind your own cloves and grate your own nutmeg. Though the payoff is worth it, I’m not going through those steps more than once every two weeks or so. 

Aside from black pepper, I also included mixed spice, which contains vegetal coriander seed and musky pimento.

Coriander and ginger go better in baked goods than you might think, and cookbook author Caroline Schiff told Bon Appétit that she sometimes uses pimento or allspice in place of pumpkin spice, explaining: “I think it adds some more complexity.”

Replace mixed spice with allspice, if you like.

Ingredients

Instructions