Posts Tagged ‘autumn’

Happy Halloween, everyone! This is my favorite day of the year and despite being in a near diabetic coma based on the amount of caramel apple suckers I’ve eaten lately, I’m still managing to chow down on these amazing confections I made yesterday for work.

I was going back and forth all week about what to make, debating between silly bat-shaped cookies and spiders with black licorice legs, or just going with some really good fall flavors and adding my own dark sense of humor. Thankfully I chose the latter because in the end, you can make these cupcakes any time and they’re still amazing, with or without Halloween frills.

The recipe for the cake is actually from my college’s cafeteria (yes, really!). One of the most beloved things in our caf were these pumpkin bars with this incredible cream cheese frosting and when I was a senior I got the recipe so I could recreate them even after graduating. Super moist and pumpkin-y without being overwhelming with the most perfect whipped cream cheese frosting… gah. I just love them. So here they are, and I send a warm thanks and Happy Halloween to the cafeteria ladies of Cornell, who happily gave me this recipe ages ago and I just now get to share on this All Hallow’s Eve.

As for the frosting, I wanted to combine my two favorite flavors with these cupcakes, so it was either pumpkin cake with apple cider frosting, or vice versa.  Since the Cornell pumpkin cake called to me, apple cider cream cheese frosting it was.  It’s super easy and quite possibly the tastiest frosting I’ve ever had. Just reduce some apple cider (get the best you can find) and pour the syrupy, reduced goodness into some cream cheese frosting.  Voila, Halloween perfection!

Fall flavors are back with a vengeance! Well, not so much a vengeance as a delicate “ahem” with this dish. I made this for Valentine’s Day last year when my former roommate Beth and I had a fun single-gals dinner and drinks night. Beth was in town this past weekend and somehow this lasagna got brought up in conversation, and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head since (thanks, Beth!). Thankfully the flavors are über-autumnal and since I’m a big fan lately of making a dinner on Sunday I can literally eat all week, this fit the bill perfectly.

This lasagna is deliciously deceiving. You hear lasagna and you think mountains of cheese, meat, pasta, sauce, etc. But this vegetarian version is actually pretty light and delicate (well, as delicate as lasagna can be) and not that bad calorie-wise. Sweet and savory butternut squash puree and basil béchamel is layered with yummy fresh pasta sheets and mozzarella cheese to balance it out. I think it’s best served with a nice bitter salad, like endive or raddichio, dressed simply with good balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil.

Hooray hooray for autumn desserts! I know my previous apple dessert could be considered my autumnal dessert christening, but I’d much rather prefer this were it because it’s just so much tastier, but not that much more complicated! I got to act as office dessert dealer fairy once again this week and made these to celebrate my coworker Kara’s birthday.  She seems to have a sweet tooth to match mine, so I knew I wanted to do something ultra rich, decadent, and of course, chocolatey.  Since I’ll be making cupcakes for Halloween in a few weeks (ooh, preview!) I decided to go with this, because honestly: cheesecake + pumpkin + chocolate = how can you go wrong?

The original recipe calls for chocolate wafer cookies and for some reason my local grocer only carried these ridiculously overpriced froufrou ones ($5.69 for 9 ounces of cookies! are they insane?!) so I decided to go a more frugal route. Luckily I remember once reading a recipe on The Pioneer Woman Cooks which had you use chocolate Teddy Graham cookies to make the base of a chocolate crust. Already being a huge fan of them, I figured killing two birds with one stone (make the bars, satisfy my own sweet tooth) was the smartest route.

Plus it’s so fun to pulse up little animal-shaped cookies.

This past weekend I went home to celebrate my mother’s birthday and have a mini vacation to celebrate autumn in Kansas City, one of my favorite things in the entire world.  I went to the Andy Warhol exhibit at Union Station, Pierpont’s for lunch, the KC Renaissance Festival (in full garb as my sisters and I used to work there), Vaughn’s Apple Orchard, Weston Red Barn Farm, and made butternut squash soup plus baked apples with vanilla ice cream for dessert. A whirlwind weekend, but perfect from beginning to end.