1 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 cup butter, room temperature
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 large egg
1/4 cup pumpkin puree
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups quick cooking oatmeal
1 cup chocolate chips

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and the sugars until fluffy. Beat in the egg, followed by the pumpkin puree and the vanilla extract. Stir in the flour mixture and the oatmeal until just combined and no streaks of flour remain. Stir in the chocolate chips. 

You can bake the cookies at this point, but I like to chill them at least overnight. It makes the cookies come out puffier. 

Preheat the oven to 350F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Drop rounded tablespoonfuls of dough onto the prepared baking sheet. Bake for about 12 minutes. Cookies will be lightly browned at the edges when done. Allow them to cool on the baking sheet for 4-5 minutes and then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Makes about 2 dozen cookies.

Christmas is two weeks from today! I'm not entirely sure how that happened - I feel as if I blinked and missed weeks, and I had promised myself I would take the time to enjoy the season too. *Sigh* And if Christmas is two weeks away, The Artist's Masquerade will be out in the world in less than two weeks! I'm very excited for you to get to know Cathal and Flavian. If you'd like to preorder from Dreamspinner (or buy The Prince's Consort), they're having a 25% off sale, but it ends today, so hurry! You can find my books at Dreamspinner here. Also I'll be doing a blog tour for The Artist's Masquerade which will begin on Sunday the 13th. I'll post soon to give you the schedule of where I'll be when and information about the giveaway, so stay tuned for that.

And for even more exciting news, I've signed a contract with Dreamspinner for the third book of the Chronicles of Tournai, The Scholar's Heart, which is Etan and Tristan's story. If you read The Prince's Consort, you probably knew this story was coming, Some of you assumed it would be coming sooner, but Etan and Tristan had to wait a while, and Cathal and Flavian demanded their story first. I hope you'll find it worth the wait.

​So since over the next couple of weeks I'll be bombarding you with promo for The Artist's Masquerade, how about something unrelated first? You know by now that I enjoy baking very much, and the holidays are a great time for baking sweet treats to share. Even Santa gets into the act, or at least my Santa baker tree ornament does. (He's not the only food-related ornament on my tree either. I have a little copper colander and a bundt pan and a toaster, among others. They are also not the strangest ornaments on my tree!) So I thought I would share a favorite holiday cookie recipe with you. I shared another one for struffoli on the Dreamspinner blog in early November, when no one was thinking of the holidays, but you can find it here if you'd like to check it out now. Struffoli are a traditional Southern Italian dessert at the holidays, and they're delicious and easy to make. 

Today I'm going to share another Italian cookie recipe for cranberry chocolate biscotti, though this one isn't a family recipe. I'm actually not sure where I got the recipe originally, but I've been making it for years. I always make them at the holidays because the cranberry/chocolate combination seems holiday festive to me, but you can make them other times of the year too.

Here's the recipe:

2 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/3 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 large eggs

Preheat oven to 350.

Combine flour and the next five ingredients in a large bowl.  Combine oil, extracts and eggs.  Add to the four mixture, stirring until well-blended (dough will be dry and crumbly).  Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface; knead lightly 7 to 8 times.  Divide the dough in half.  Shape each portion into an 8 inch long roll.  Place rolls 6 inches apart on a baking sheet coated with cooking spray; flatten each roll to 1 inch thickness.

Bake at 350 for 35 minutes.  Remove rolls from baking sheet, cool 10 minutes on a wire rack.  Cut each roll diagonally into 15 (1/2 inch) slices.  Place the slices cut sides down on a baking sheet.  Reduce oven temperature to 325 and bake for 10 minutes.  Turn the cookies over, bake for an additional 10 minutes (cookies will be slightly soft in the center but will harden as they cool).  Remove from baking sheet and cool completely on a wire rack.

The recipe makes about 36 cookies. It's a bit of a process, but the results are delicious, and they make great dessert or snacks or something to dunk in your hot beverage of choice.

Now that you have a cookie and a hot beverage, how about a few more holiday reads? Just so you have something to curl up with while you eat your cookies. Because what's better than hot chocolate, Christmas cookies, and a holiday romance while you sit by the tree?

What Happens at Christmas by Jay Northcote - A sweet, fun friends to lovers romance with snowed in trope and fake boyfriends. Her novella Cold Feet is a good holiday read too.

When Love Flue In by Lillian Francis - A sweet, sexy holiday romance between a newly divorced man and the chimney sweep he's had a crush on for years. Definitely has the warm fuzzy holiday feel.

A Fortunate Blizzard by LC Chase - Another snowed in story (such a great trope!). I really enjoyed this, though it made me cry before it got to the wonderful HEA.

Do you bake around the holidays? Even if you don't, what are your favorite holiday treats?

When autumn arrives, I get excited for so many reasons, some of which I've already shared with you, but a huge one is autumn baking. I love to bake, but what I bake is often seasonal. I bake lighter treats (and less often) in the heat of summer, for instance, and in autumn much of my baking involves pumpkin. Not all of it - I like apple cinnamon muffins in the fall too, and some things, like brownies and chocolate chip cookies, defy seasons - but I do love pumpkin baked goods. I probably make pumpkin bread most often (and I'm talking maybe a loaf each week). So I thought I would share my favorite pumpkin bread recipe with you today. The original recipe comes from the Williams-Sonoma Thanksgiving Entertaining cookbook, but I don't exactly follow the recipe from the book. This is what I do:

Ingredients:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup white or yellow cornmeal
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 large eggs
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/3 cup olive oil
1/3 cup fat free plain yogurt
1 cup pumpkin puree 

Preheat oven to 350. Lightly butter a 5x9 inch loaf pan (or spray with cooking spray).

Whisk together the flour, cornmeal, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. In a separate bowl, combine eggs, both sugars, oil, yogurt, and pumpkin. Beat with an electric mixer until smooth. Add the dry ingredients in two batches, mixing until just blended after each. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top.

Bake for about 1 hour, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool in the pan on a wire rack for about ten minutes, then remove from the pan and cool completely.

The recipe is pretty simple, and the results are delicious. Plus the whole house smells amazing while the pumpkin bread is in the oven, which I adore. I love to eat the pumpkin bread warm with butter or maybe a little nutella like in the picture above (but then, nutella is pretty fabulous on anything!). It makes a lovely treat on a chilly fall day while I'm curled up with a book.

​Do you have any seasonal foods you enjoy making?

For the month of November (and wow, it's already November!), Dreamspinner Press asked their authors to share favorite holiday recipes on the DSP blog. Today, it's my turn, and I'm sharing a favorite family dessert recipe that we make every year at Christmastime. I know it might be a little early to think about the holidays (or maybe not - Thanksgiving is in a few weeks! How did that happen?), but it's never too early for delicious dessert recipes, right? Find my recipe at the DSP blog here.