Last week, while baking warm pumpkin cupcakes to stave off the fall chill, I did something I don’t normally. Instead of using store-bought spices, I heaped fragrant teaspoons of freshly ground nutmeg and cinnamon into my batter, infusing my cakes with intense spicy aromas that wafted through the house and clung to the cupcakes, eliciting oooh’s and ahhh’s from my co-workers the next day.

But since I didn’t grind the spices, I can’t take full credit for the success. That job was done by Smith & Truslow, a Boulder-based freshly ground and organic spice company, where co-owner Jean Gleason toasts and mills each of the more than 50 spices before shipping them out and saving home cooks the hassle. (Really, how often do you process your own cinnamon sticks?) Smith & Truslow does the majority of its business online, where gift and reoccurring orders are a snap.