5 Recipes You Should Bake This Fall | Cozy Fall Baking Day

Today I'm making five of my favorite things to bake this time of year. Things I think are worth adding to your fall baking list. They're simple, taste amazing, and they really feel like fall. These are some of the things I make every fall that just feel like the beginning of the season to me. The smell of apples and spices in the kitchen, pulling something golden and warm from the oven, and sitting down with a warm cup of coffee and something homemade to enjoy. There's just something about those simple things that make this time of year feel extra special. We are getting a little taste of fall today. I woke up and it was 55 degrees. You know that brisk feeling in the morning. I loved it so much. And we're supposed to get a high of like 75 today. The cool breeze. So it is enough that it has definitely put me into a baking mood. I am really trying to do whatever I can this year to savor the season as much as I can because it always flies by before I feel like I really had a chance to enjoy it. So one of the ways that I am doing that is by baking something different each week that really captures the flavors of fall. 27 weeks today almost in the third trimester. Okay my dears we are going to be using some of my fall decor in this first recipe. I love muffins. I love muffins all year round but there is something that hits different about a muffin made with all the fall flavors. Nothing like it. I like having these on hand in my freezer. Keep this in mind. All of today's recipes work great in the freezer. So you make a double batch, have some for now, put some in the freezer for later. We'll have these for afternoon snacks. Let's go with breakfast or you know just whenever the craving hits. I'm starting with these apple crumb muffins. There's something about baking with apples as soon as fall arrives that I never get tired of. They're soft and tender little pieces of apple throughout and that buttery cinnamon crumb gets golden and crisp in the oven. They're simple but they make the whole kitchen smell lovely. For our dry ingredients we need two cups of all-purpose flour. That one was a little bit lacking. Okay and I need my measuring spoons. One and a half teaspoons of baking powder and then we need a half teaspoon of baking soda. Okay I'm gonna do a half teaspoon of ground cinnamon but you could sub that out for some of the apple pie spice we made if you'd like a little bit more of a spiced flavor. I'm just gonna do plain cinnamon and then we're gonna do a half teaspoon of salt. Okay I'm gonna give that a stir and then we will work on our sugar and butter mixture with some other liquid-ish ingredients. All right to a half cup of room temperature butter I have a quarter cup of granulated sugar and then I have a half cup of brown sugar. I like using a combination of sugar just for added depth of flavor and I like butter over oil in some recipes just because again way more flavor. Two eggs. One, two. A half cup of either plain Greek yogurt or sour cream. Quarter cup of whatever milk you have. I have some buttermilk so I'm going to use that. Add some more flavor and of course some vanilla. I'm going to do about two teaspoons really what I have left in my bottle here I needed to refill. Give this a stir. Now we need about a cup and a half, two cups of the diced apples. That was roughly one and a half of my very large apples or two to three medium-ish apples. I'm going to combine them here with my flour first to coat them in that so that they more evenly distribute within the batter and they're all just sinking to the bottom. And now we're just going to combine the two. As you can see it's quite a thick mixture. Now of course for apple crumb muffins we need the crumb topping. So I have six tablespoons of room temperature butter. I have a cup of flour. One third cup each of brown sugar and cane sugar. I'm going to do a teaspoon of cinnamon and a half teaspoon of salt. I'm just going to get this mixed up together until it's nice and crumbly. It should look something like this. Now we are ready to assemble and get these guys baking. I have my muffin liners or cupcake liners here. It's just a standard size. This will make 12 muffins. I love these little tulip liners. I think they just add to that fall aesthetic. I also have some really cute ones I got from Hobby Lobby but I'm saving those for Kids Church. Get these in here. Now I have my oven preheating to 450 degrees. Like I've said before I like to cook these cook bake them very hot to start to encourage that nice puff up and rise for a domed top. So five minutes at 450 degrees. Drop the temp down to 350. Don't open the oven door or anything. Just drop it down to 350 and then bake for another 15 to 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Now I also like to make sure that I fill these pretty full. They're going to go up pretty high. It's going to look like it's over the pan but the liners are going to keep it all in and then we're going to spoon some of our crumb topping. I meant to do this first thing in the morning then I got carried away with baking so before it slips my mind all together we got to pull some meat out for dinner tonight. I just got my most recent butcher box order in so we're going to choose these options. We've got some organic chicken tenderloins, beef top sirloin steak, some boneless beef ribeye, a center cut pork loin, and some lovely ground turkey. We're going with the beef top sirloin. I'm pretty picky about the type of meat we bring into our home. Eventually we'd like to raise more of our own but we're just not at a place to make it happen right now. So with butcher box I like knowing that we can have high quality meat delivered right to our door from farmers and suppliers that meet their really high quality standards. I also appreciate that with butcher box they give me a little more information about where they get their meat from and how it has been raised. With their beef it is 100% grass-fed and grass finished means they have never been confined to a feed lot. They have been out on pasture their entire lives. Grass-fed can sometimes be deceiving if it just says grass-fed alone it means at some point in their lives they have been fed grass. Not that that's the only thing they've eaten. All their seafood is wild-caught and none of their meat has ever been given added hormones or antibiotics. I also love the convenience. I love having one less thing to think about. I can order a box have it delivered to my door. I get to choose what we actually use and I get to have high quality meat stocked in the freezer for nights like tonight when I've been busy all day and then suddenly I remember oh right I have to make dinner. If you've been wanting to give ButcherBox a try you can use my code SEED at checkout to get $60 off your subscription plus a free meat of your choice. I'll have the link in the description box below. Thank you so much to ButcherBox for sponsoring today's video. Next are these chai spiced scones and these might be one of my favorite things to make when the mornings start getting colder. They're buttery and tender with cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, nutmeg, and cloves and they're just made for sitting down with a warm cup of tea. I love having something like this to reach for on a slow fall morning. So for our scones I have prepared the ingredients. I have 12 tablespoons of frozen butter that I have shredded here. I'm going to have two cups of flour, one egg, one egg yolk, a third cup of either brown sugar or coconut sugar, one tablespoon of baking powder, a half teaspoon of salt, a tablespoon of chai spice, and then I forgot to put this guy over here. I have a half cup of cold heavy cream. So I'm going to get my two cups of all-purpose flour in here. I've made these gluten-free before so you can use a one-to-one gluten-free flour if you need to. I'm gonna add my baking powder to that and the salt which I just spilled some. Okay and then a tablespoon of the chai spice. I'm also gonna add my sugar now. Give this a mix. Now in goes the shredded frozen butter. Really want to make sure that the butter is separated and it's not sticking together in clumps. All right now we're gonna make a little well in the center. I'm going to add my heavy cream. And my one egg. And egg yolk. Now this is quite a dry dough so I'm gonna turn it out here onto my work surface. Bring it together just a little bit with my hands. I just want it to come together into an actual dough ball. I don't want to work it too much otherwise that butter is going to start to melt. And we need the butter to get those flaky scones. We're gonna pat it or roll it whichever you prefer to about an eight inch circle. Roughly three quarters of an inch thick. And you can either do this in six slices or eight. I'm going to cut it into eight. Now these are going to get placed on a parchment lined baking sheet. These get brushed with some heavy cream. And then sprinkled with some coarse sugar if desired. Okay 375 for about 18 to 25 minutes. You want the tops to be just lightly golden brown. Now I like to top these off with a drizzle but you could fully glaze them if you'd like. I used three quarter cup of powdered sugar. One and a half teaspoons of chai spice. One teaspoon of vanilla. Three tablespoons of heavy cream. A tablespoon of maple syrup. And a pinch of salt. These apple cheddar biscuits are a little bit unexpected but I love that about them. They're tender and super flaky with sharp cheddar and sweet apple baked right into the dough. There's something so good about a warm biscuit straight from the oven and these would be lovely alongside a bowl of soup or a simple supper on a chilly evening. For these biscuits you'll need two cups of all-purpose flour. Two teaspoons baking powder. One half teaspoon baking soda. A teaspoon of sugar. A half teaspoon of salt. And then we're going to cut in a half cup of butter. You want to make sure it is fairly cold. Then I'm going to add in some sharp cheddar cheese. About three quarter cup. Probably more like a cup honestly. And three quarter cup of chopped apples. To finish it off I am going to add one cup of cold buttermilk. That is my preferred milk of choice but you could just use regular milk if that's all you have on hand. This dough comes together fairly quickly and I then just pat it out on a floured surface to about a 10 inch square. And then I cut that into nine squares. These get transferred to a parchment lined baking sheet baked at 450 degrees for roughly 15 minutes. These are still warm. Butter smeared on top and apple butter on the inside. It's really good stuff. All right mama needed a little bit of a pick me up. I had quite a few people ask me if caffeine is okay in pregnancy now. So they don't recommend anything over 200 milligrams and the coffee that I drink is a third caff. So I don't get anywhere near that and I don't even have it every day. Just sometimes if I don't sleep so good the night before I need a little bit of an afternoon pick me up and it does the trick. But anyways I also must apologize if you can probably hear as the day progresses I am getting stuffier and stuffier. I didn't mention but we have a little bit of a head cold going around the family. My kids picked it up about a week ago. I thought I was in the clear and then you know two days ago I started getting a sore throat but it's okay. It's not that bad. Somehow every year this time even though my kids aren't in public school we end up with some sort of sickness to start off the school year. We were at a birthday party last week and we took the kids to Lake Tobias. If you are in the PA area maybe you know what that is. So they were around people and they got it but whatever. Anyways I apologize for how I am sounding but let's push forward here. So sorry my mom called. I had to take that. She's on her way back with the kids. The kids are all healed up. I just have like a lingering cough going on so she took them for school. So I need to get this done before they get home. So this next one is for when you're craving a pie but you don't want to make pie. We're going to do a semi-homemade hand pie using some puff pastry that I got from the grocery store because I don't got time for that. Don't have time to make my own puff pastry and this will work just fine. So we're going to do an apple hand pie. Apple is the fruit of the month. I always think of September as apple month and then I get into some more pumpkin as October approaches. So I am going to make a quick apple pie filling. You can use canned apple pie filling if you are really limited on time. So I'm just going to peel, slice, and dice these and get them into a saucepan with a few other ingredients. I have my apples ready to go here in my not saucepan because my saucepan is dirty and I don't feel like washing it. So we're using this little frying pan. I'm going to add some butter to this. Now I know I have shared like variations on an apple pie filling the last few weeks but I have done different amounts every week. So really I just kind of do it to taste, okay. There isn't like a fixed amount. I have five medium apples in here. I'm going to throw in this chunk of butter. This is probably three tablespoons, okay. When it comes to sugar, I also do that to taste depending on how tart my apples are. These are Macintosh apples. I absolutely love them for baking. I like them for fresh eating. The rest of my family doesn't because they think they're too soft. But anyways, they are a little on the tart side. So for my five apples, I am going to do a quarter cup of sugar. I'm just going to have it between cane sugar and brown sugar. Okay, over to the stove, medium heat for about five minutes until the butter is melted, the sugar is dissolved, and the apples start to get a little tender. Okay, I'm going to turn this down just a little bit. This is looking and smelling lovely. Now I'm going to add some cinnamon. About a half teaspoon to a teaspoon, depending on how spiced you want it. You could also add that apple pie spice. I want to send some of this home with my mom, and she doesn't like when things are overly spiced. So we're just going simple with some cinnamon. I'm going to grab some vanilla. I forgot that I was all out, so I had to go grab some. This is some bourbon vanilla from 2023. What a treat. A little bit of that. I'm going to sprinkle in some flour just to thicken it up. You can use any pie filling you want in these little semi-homemade hand pies. I just want to make sure it's a little bit thicker. If it's too runny, it'll just seep out everywhere. All right, let's take one sheet of the puff pastry here, and I'm going to flour my surface. I'm going to roll this out a bit bigger. Okay, about 14 by 14. I need a knife. I need my rolling pin. Okay, we're going with 12 and a half by 12 and a half. And we're going to cut this right in half each way. I will bring the camera closer for you. Now you want to find about the middle point. I'm just going to score each direction here. I have something to gauge this by. And then two squares you're going to leave whole, not cut. And then you're going to cut the other two into three strips, okay? Like so. I'm going to flip and cut these. Okay, get some pie filling. So I ended up putting a heaping tablespoon of my apple pie filling on the one corner. Just make sure you put it on the corner that the strips are pointing towards, if that makes sense. And then I'm going to take some egg wash, coat it on the opposite side, and fold that over on the diagonal there. And you're going to have this little sealed pastry, okay? And then we're just going to basket weave the other two sections. I did spread a little bit of egg wash on them just to keep everything in place. So if you've never done that before, you take the outer two strips of one side, fold them across. And on the opposite side, you take the first strip and fold it across them. Then you're going to fold back those outer two, fold across the middle one of that first section. Now I am stretching them a little bit because I want to be able to seal it better and fold those edges underneath so it doesn't come undone when it starts puffing up in the oven. So we just continue on with our basket weave process, folding and unfolding until we have a nice weave. And then this is just going to get tucked underneath and transferred over to a parchment lined baking sheet. I did brush the tops with some more egg wash and sprinkled them with some coarse sugar. These go into a 350 degree oven for roughly 20-ish minutes or until they are puffed up and golden brown. And I saved these for last because they might be my favorite. I'm making a browned butter maple pecan cookies with dark brown sugar and real maple syrup and toasted pecans. Browning the butter gives them this deep nutty flavor. And as they bake, the whole kitchen smells like maple syrup and caramel. They're soft and chewy in the middle with crisp edges and a little bit of a crunch from the pecans. They're exactly the kind of cookies I want to have around when fall is in full swing. You start this recipe by browning some butter. A half cup goes into a saucepan over medium-high heat. For about five minutes, you'll see it start to bubble. It'll start to smell nutty and caramel-y and you'll see little brown flecks start to form. You're going to want to let that cool before proceeding with the recipe. Then you will need your browned butter, a cup of dark brown sugar, one egg, a third cup of maple syrup, one teaspoon vanilla extract, one teaspoon maple extract. Mix those things together and then combine about two cups of all-purpose flour. If the dough looks a little bit too wet, you can add up to a quarter cup more of flour. You're also going to need one teaspoon of baking soda, a half teaspoon of salt, and to finish it off, a half cup of chopped pecans. And then I also grab some halved pecans just for a little garnish on top. This recipe will give you roughly 24 cookies. I like to scoop them, put the halved pecan on top, and then I pop these trays into the freezer for about 15 to 20 minutes. You don't want them frozen solid, you just want them nice and chilled. They go into a 350 degree oven for about 12 to 15 minutes, depending on how you like your cookie baked. I like mine a little on the underbaked side, so I like to stay around 12. After they come out of the oven, as you saw there, I like to pat them down. It just adds to the chewiness factor for me. There's no scientific backing behind that, just my personal opinion. It's the simple things like these that I think make Fall so special. The familiar recipes, the flavors we come back to year after year, taking the time to enjoy them with those you love. You don't have to do anything elaborate to make the season special. Sometimes it's as simple as baking something from scratch and enjoying it together. I hope this gives you a little inspiration for your own kitchen, and a reminder to slow down and save for Fall while it's here. Thank you so much for taking some time out of your day to spend with me. All of today's recipes can be found on my website. I will have them linked for you in the description below. Many blessings, my friend. Until next time, you take care.