MVP Ingredients and the Best of Fall Baking

Every must-have recipe on your Fall baking Bingo card.

Oct 10, 2024

This is it, Bakers!

Mid-autumn marks the start of the baking playoff season. We aren’t playing just for the championship game. No, no - we’ve got 2.5 months of the best baking of the year coming up! This is when all the best recipes come to work. Cozy and comforting, and often covered in caramel.

Pumpkin Cupcakes with Brown Butter Frosting

With a roster of all-star ingredients, this season is ours for the taking. We’ve got our starters: apple and pumpkin. Pear, butternut squash, and gingerbread coming in hot off the bench. We’ve got a sleeper hitter, the small and mighty cranberry, showing off one day out of the year. And don’t forget MVP cinnamon spice, making all the other ingredients shine a bit brighter. Lastly, peppermint with an eggnog assist to close it out.

Did I get my sports metaphors right? Maybe not quite, but you get the idea. As bakers, remember to stock up on your spices. Might as well snag a new carton of molasses next time you're at the store too. Between hosting holidays, school concerts, and festive potlucks, get ready to have your ovens working over time!

For us here in British Columbia, we will be celebrating our 11th Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend. Even after all this time, it still sneaks up on me. It is sort of like a kick-off event for a super sweet and celebratory season.

I will be debuting some new recipes with my family that I will share with you in the next coming months. Until then, I’ve prepared a Fall Recipe Index at the end of this post with plenty of cozy, autumnal favorites.

Butterscotch Pudding with Salted Caramel

What I’ve Been Eating:

Skillet Meals - What makes this different from other cozy, one-pot meals? I think it’s that ability to go from the stove to the oven for extra melting or browning or crisping. Fall is cast iron skillet season over here.

One of my favorites as of late is to make skillet beans where you heat big butter beans or white kidney beans in a marinara-like sauce along with some kale or greens then sprinkle with cheese and throw under the broiler. Eat it with thick slices of sourdough or crusty bread.

Sheet-pan Sausage and Veg - Another one pan meal for busy nights is to roast hearty vegetables and sausage at the same time. Find vegetables that take about 30 minutes to roast, (the same time as it takes the sausage to cook through), and chuck them all in together.

In the fall, I usually go for Brussels sprouts (keep whole if small), sliced delicata squash, cubed butternut squash, diced beets, and wedges of red onion. Add beans or grains with a warm vinaigrette on the side, if you’d like.

Bread of All Kinds - Sourdough, focaccia, no-knead crusty bread, cornbread, I’m here for it all! Anything to serve with chili, sop up soup, or as a vehicle for saucy greens and beans.

Applesauce - This is not revolutionary, but consider this your autumnal reminder that homemade applesauce is super easy and a great way to use bruised and aging apples leftover from apple picking. I don’t even use a recipe most of the time.

Just peel and chunk your apples, add lemon juice and a little water to get things moving. Start with a little brown sugar and cinnamon - you can always add more to sweeten later. Cook on low-medium heat until the apples are soft enough to smash or blend. I use a stick/immersion blender instead of my Vitamix for more control of the final texture.

What I’m Reading:

The Rom-Commers - Terrible name, but a very sweet book about an unlikely pair of screenwriters working on a romantic comedy. I love the unexpected underlying theme of writing your own history after tragedy.

Cooking In Real Life - I snagged this somewhat new release from the library and quickly bookmarked like half the book. Just as Lidey says, these are real life recipes and perfect as I’m starting to get into the swing of weeknight meals for busy schedules.

What’s Growing:

Unfortunately, not much. The fall garden is not turning out as promised by the Internet. I was also told there would be less caterpillars and pests this time of year, but in fact there are way more! Also, I am realizing that my big hydrangea is making too much shade over my primary garden bed - a problem I did not have in the spring when the bush was still bare from winter.

The only thing that has really grown is arugula. Who knew the smell of fresh arugula was so intoxicating?! I love it.

I’ve planted dozens of beet seeds over the past few months. I FINALLY have a few beet hopefuls. At least the greens are taking off, so hopefully the roots are growing nicely below deck.

Thanks for reading Bake Club! This post is public so feel free to share it.