Yay for celebration week! It is our 3 year anniversary. I love October (and the last 11 days of September). It is a great time of the year for our family!
A fall salad with roasted squash, pears, pecans, goat cheese, cranberries – and a maple mustard vinaigrette. I’ll post recipe later.
Bring on October. These last two weeks of September through October are my favorite of the year.
The weather in ATL has been kind of rainy – but definitely cooler. Thanks to the gym my jeans and other clothes are fitting better. And I’m getting to wear lightweight scarves. Both of my boys were born within 4 weeks of each other (different years of course) and my mister and I celebrate our anniversary in between their birthdays. It is full and packed with love and fun celebrations and highlights of the year for sure.
This week here is what’s going down in the kitchen. Right now it is a total mess because we’ve had my parents here as a vacation follow-up so we’ve done more and I’ve not felt like cooking. Hello Monday. Time to declutter.
Fall equals apples to me. And I had a reason to make a cake today: because I had a bag full of apples. And I had a spice cake mix so all I had to do was run to my neighborhood Publix and get some cream cheese. Because we all need some good creamy rich cream cheese frosting every now and then right?
This is simple and moist and definitely a winner. Enjoy tonight!
Moist, perfect fall cake with a thick layer of cream cheese frosting
Ingredients
1 boxed spice cake mix
3 eggs
1 cup water
⅓ cup vegetable oil
3 cups chopped, peeled gala apples
1 8oz package of cream cheese
2 cups powdered sugar
1½ tsp vanilla extract
4½ T unsalted butter
Instructions
Mix cake according to box instructions.
Add in apples before baking.
Spray pan and cook according to box instructions.
Let cool.
Mix cream cheese and butter.
Add in vanilla
Add powdered sugar until frosting is smooth.
Frost cake.
Eat.
I cut circles out of the cake and just set a double layer and made naked cakes with just layers of cream cheese frosting. Sprinkled some cinnamon on top.
One of the true joys about living near the mountains is picking apples. We actually picked apples in Canada on our honeymoon. So fun to do something you enjoy with the man you enjoy most in the world.
Picking apples is great exercise and you get healthy food out of it – just don’t get most of your exercise from doing squats to pick up the ones from the ground. Worm eaten apples aren’t worth it.
I also remember crab apples. My grandparent’s dirt road used to be lined with apple trees and we would run up and down the roads, getting dirty and eating sour apples. Ah, the joys of childhood.
I can’t wait to take my boys apple picking – to see their joy when they can hold what they pick in their little bitty hands and hold it up as if to say This is my apple! They love wandering around with anything in their hands, so apples will be just the treat for them!
This recipe is topped with some delicious additions to make it even better. First, I most give a shout out to the Mister. He said he would like this cake better with a caramel sauce. I’ll work on that babe. Talenti Gelato is amazing and their containers make great desk accessories – and its made right here in Marietta where we live. Their Tahitian Vanilla Bean is rich and deep. (Side note to any Talenti people reading this: can my boys and I come do a tour and taste testing?) Then I tried my hand at melting down red hots in apple juice – and it worked as a chewy magic shell. It basically made the dish pretty.
Yes, Fall has officially begun because we are now passed Labor Day! Do you still wear white? Just curious!?
Well, I’m definitely cranking out some warmer meals this week. The only thing that has been different about the Atlanta weather for the past week is we’ve had a lot more rain. I love the big storm clouds. I don’t love the fact that the storms seems to come during my boys’ nap time. They aren’t fans of constant thunder! Oh, well, I will train them right!
Pot Roast with potatoes, carrots, and onions
Beef Tips over Basmati
Chili (from a friend through a freezer meal exchange that I will be sharing) and cornbread
And i’m baking some soft batch cookies with fall candies. Can’t wait to show you finished product! And share them with a mom who is about to have another baby!
Bring on the Fall! The weather hasn’t changed that much from last week, but the feel in my kitchen certainly has. Earlier this week I made some of these: some friends and some little misters in our home devoured these.
They are all gone.
I had never made a snickerdoodle until I lived with one of the girls I discipled (while she was in college). She loved snickerdoodles. And the fun thing is – that as I read the directions, I read them wrong, and it turned out I like it better and now this recipe is my tried and true snickerdoodle. Snickerdoodles are so easy and if done right they are perfectly soft and chewy for days. We just had the last of these at lunch and they were still chewy. Success!
And seriously – one of the things that can make any bad day better for me is buttercream. I love it – a true Hero! 🙂 But, it is also a bear to get perfect. If you get your butter too soft – forget it. I think I added too much pumpkin to mine trying to achieve the perfect pumpkin flavor – but below I’ve changed the recipe some. I hope yours turns out better than mine.
Bring on the Fall. This week seems to be one of the hottest in the whole summer – just when I’m thinking of pumpkin lattes and vanilla and sweet potatoes.
I look forward to evenings when I can snuggle on the couch under a blanket with my hubs – watching a movie – after the boys go to bed – knowing that it is getting cool outside!
Patchwork Butternut Squash, Kale, & Chicken Pot Pie
Author: the charming south kitchen
Recipe type: Main Dish
Cuisine: Southern
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 6-8
A fall flavored pot pie with chicken, butternut squash, and kale
Ingredients
2 chicken breasts, cut into pieces
1 onion, diced
1 garlic clove, minced
2 T unsalted butter
2 T evoo
1¼ cup diced butternut squash
½ tsp fennel seeds
½ tsp white pepper
1½ tsp kosher salt
½ tsp black pepper
2 massive handfuls of chopped kale
⅓ cup shredded parmesan cheese
1 pie crust, torn in pieces
Instructions
Heat the oven to 350.
In cast iron skillet, heat oil and butter. Add in onion and cook for about 3-4 minutes.
Add garlic and cook for about 1 minutes
Add squash and cook for about 5 minutes.
Remove from pan.
Cook the chicken in same pan until done.
Combine the vegetables, chicken, spices, and cheese.
Pour into a deep dish pie pan. Cut strips of pie crust and make a lattice or patchwork pattern out of them. Layer on top of pot pie.
Cook for about 45-50 minutes or until top crust is golden brown.
3.2.1311
I’d never made a pot pie until I moved back to Raleigh in 2010. My boss’s wife – and friend – made a delicious one and said it was so easy – well, this one is too and has wonderful Fall flavors!
We are quickly coming to the end of summer – I mean soon Labor Day will be here then you will start to see ads for Christmas. Crazy. Fall is definitely my favorite season of the year, so I wanted to share some of my favorites I’ve found this week to celebrate the upcoming season!
The Nester’s house is always cozy but I love her glimpse into switching seasons.
Since I could eat tacos all the time – these will be perfect for cheap and Fall
And this time of year at markets or grocers there is an abundance of zucchini – why not make several of these loaves and freeze them – then you can pull one out on the chili mornings that are to come, toast it, and slather it with butter, and drink with a beverage of your choice!
The Fall is a great time for our family because there are two birthdays that we celebrate – and we have to have an amazing cake!
These blondies have almost everything I love about fall in one pan…I’m glad that I should have reasons to bake them!
What are your favorite things about Fall? And how are you celebrating the end of summer?
Fall – I think for a lot of us kitchen people its one of our favorite seasons. Pumpkin. Cinnamon. Sweet Potatoes. Apples.
But, I don’t think I had ever experienced a Fall season until I moved to North Carolina in 2000. See, I grew up in central Florida. The only two seasons we had were Summer and Christmas Day (and some years we only had one season). I loved it. I was close to Disney World though I only remember going in high school and college when I would do Night of Joy with the youth groups. I was close to the beach (though we had a pool, so my Dad couldn’t figure out why we needed to spend money going to the beach).
But, I remember moving to Wake Forest, North Carolina to start seminary right before a huge snow storm – rethinking the whole moving north thing. But, then fall came around at the start of my second semester. I adored the sound the leaves made as I walked through them on my way to class. I loved wearing jackets with my jeans (even though I would sport some flipflops usually). I loved sitting down with a warm cup of chai or steamed milk or hot chocolate to study out on the lawn. The bright blue Fall sky against the browns and yellows and reds of the leaves. Gorgeous.
And of course, Fall brings pumpkin! I could eat pumpkin goodies year round, but yesterday when I stepped outside for an early morning out, and felt the slightly cooler Atlanta air, I knew I was ready for Fall. So, I whipped up these pumpkin butter muffins for my mister. They were a winner. (This recipe was inspired by Joy the Baker)
When the husband is gone, its a good idea to tantalize him to come back home if you send him delicious pictures of pumpkin French toast. Really – I did send him a picture and he said I was mean. I’ll make these again for him.
But, these are perfect with a topping of real maple syrup and whipped cream.
Pumpkin French Toast
Serves 2-3 (depending on how hungry you are)
6 slices of day old bread (I used Panera’s Honey Wheat)
3 eggs
1/4 cup whole milk
1 1/2 T sugar
1 T light brown sugar
1/2 tsp almond extract
cinnamon and allspice to taste
1/3 cup pumpkin puree
butter to cook with (gives it much more flavor than Pam or others sprays)
syrup, butter, whipped cream for topping
