Spooky Fall Fun

Hi Blog Friends! I wasn't kidding when I said that I'd be back soon!!! But I have some more good fall cooking and baking to share with you and I have to tell you all about Halloween before we start cooking for Thanksgiving this week!

One of the prettiest fall recipes that we made was Apple Cider Muffins. To make this, you have to reduce apple cider first. We accidentally burned the first round, so we had to do that part twice. These muffins have a batter that can sit in the fridge overnight, so that's a big bonus if you want something that you can prepare ahead of time. These would actually be great for a light breakfast on Thanksgiving morning!

I love how the apple garnish on top tells you right away what kind of muffins these are.

One of my favorite fall breakfasts was Classic Pumpkin Scones. This is another recipe where it is very important to blot all of the liquid out of the canned pumpkin to achieve the proper texture. These scones are great, but what takes them over the top is the maple glaze. It was so good that we saved the extra and used it as a topping for other recipes.

I think that these scones look pretty enough to sell at a bakery.

The next morning we made Pumpkin Maple Muffins and added the maple glaze from the scones. These muffins would be great on their own, but the glaze was an excellent addition. Honestly, the glaze would be an excellent addition to just about anything!!!!!

The glaze definitely makes these look prettier too!

A fun lunch that we had was Pizza French Toast. We didn't follow a recipe for this, but saw the idea online. We sliced bread and made sandwiches with mozzarella and tomato sauce. Then we dipped them in an egg mixture mixed with Italian herbs and cooked the sandwiches on the griddle like French toast.

Dipping the sandwiches in egg gave them a nice crispy crust.

But the centers were soft and cheesy.

We created our own fish dish, based on something we saw called Salmon Stuffed with Creamy Spinach and Onion. We used Arctic char, but we ended up with the wrong kind of filets, so we couldn't stuff them. Instead, we made a filling with caramelized onions, spinach and cream cheese and then topped the roasted fish with the filling. This was great and easy!

This filling was delicious. And I think it would be great if you made extra and then used it as a filling for omelets the next morning!

A weird sounding dinner that turned out to be surprisingly good was Margherita Pizza Beans. We made this recipe even easier than it is written by using my Grammy Marcia and Papa Bill's canned tomatoes from their garden. We just reduced them down before we added the beans. This is a great, cozy weeknight meal. The recipe says to serve them on toast, but we had them on their own and they were great.

The cast iron skillets helped get the edges crispy and the center creamy, which was a really nice contrast.

Since our Italy trip, we've continued on our pasta kick, and have made some more really good recipes. Crisp Gnocchi with Burst Tomatoes and Mozzarella was absolutely fantastic. We doubled the recipe and seared the gnocchi on the stove, but then transferred everything to a baking dish to cook in the oven.

This dish was a huge hit with everyone!

I liked how the cherry tomatoes cooked down to be about the same size as the gnocchi.

One Pot French Onion Pasta Bake was another big success. To make this, you caramelize onions and then add garlic and mushrooms and wine. The nice part about this recipe is that then you just boil the pasta in with the other ingredients, which is how it gets cooked in one pot!

This is another very flavorful vegetarian meal that looks beautiful and tastes delicious!!

One of my favorite fall traditions is that my dad and I buy a fresh truffle and make pasta. This year, we did it a little bit differently and made Cacio e Pepe, which is a Roman pasta dish made with Pecorino Romano cheese and black pepper. This pasta dish was outstanding. I can't even describe how good it was. The only problem with this was that the Cacio e Pepe flavors overwhelmed the truffle. So next year, I think we'll go back to making a simpler pasta for the truffle. But this pasta is a recipe worth making, just don't waste a truffle using it with this one.

Truffle on top always does make dishes look special!

A good and easy weeknight pasta dish was Shrimp Scampi with Orzo. We increased the lemon juice in this to add flavor. The rest of us liked it that way, but my big-little sister thought it was too lemony. Although, come to think of it, my little-little sister didn't seem to like the pasta very much and only ate the shrimp. So maybe she thought it was too lemony too! You can make this and add as much lemon as you think tastes right!!

You can modify this dish to make it more shrimp or more orzo, depending on which you like more.

We made Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars for tea time one afternoon. They're a simple classic, but were really good. We doubled the recipe and the only problem is that we had to cook them WAY longer than the recipe said. So if you make these, just check them frequently and be prepared for them to still be very underbaked when the recipe says they should be done.

These are a crowd pleaser and will definitely be a hit with kids.

We brought Funfetti Whoopie Pies to Rachel for her birthday. We wanted a treat that we could transport easily, but that communicated birthday fun, so whoopie pies it was!! Rachel and Grazzy and I loved them, but my mom thought that the cake part was too dry. She wants to try a different funfetti whoopie recipe next time, so maybe we'll try something new for another birthday.

The sprinkles on the edges definitely make these look adorable though!

We have lots of friends who were born in the fall (all the best Michelinistas are!!!!!!). Chelsea loves molasses and ginger cookies so we made Chewy Ginger Molasses Cookies for her birthday. We added chopped crystallized ginger to these and they were awesome!!!!

To me, these look like quintessential fall cookie!!!!!

But we still had maple glaze left over from our pumpkin scones, so we made Brown Butter and Maple Chewy Pumpkin Cookies. The recipe has you roll these in a cinnamon sugar like snickerdoodles, but we skipped that part and drizzled them with the glaze instead. These were another amazing fall cookie that I highly highly recommend!

I'm telling you, this maple glaze is amazing on anything!!!

Our family takes Halloween VERY seriously!!! To start getting in the Halloween spirit, we made these pretzel candy corn treats the week before to give to people. You don't even need a recipe for these. You take waffle shaped pretzels, put Hershey's Hugs on top (you could use Hershey's Kisses but I think that the stripes look cuter!) and bake them at 300 for five minutes. Then you smush a piece of candy corn onto the melty chocolate. This recipe is a great example of something being greater than the sum of its parts. Rachel doesn't even like white chocolate or candy corn, but she loved these treats!! They're super easy, super festive and super delicious. They're just super!

Don't the stripes on the Hugs make these look cute?!

We had a Halloween party the night before with friends and made a Char-Spookerie Platter. To make the hand, we traced my mom's arm on parchment paper and put plastic wrap over it. Then we shaped Boursin cheese like the arm and used cheese sticks for the fingers and wrapped the whole thing in prosciutto and wrapped it up in plastic wrap and refrigerated it to get it cold. We used olives for fingernails as a final touch!

What do you think?!

We also made Sushi Brain for one of our appetizers. We halved an avocado and filled it with cream cheese. Then we closed it back up with the cream cheese inside instead of the pit and molded seasoned sushi rice over the avocado. Then we folded pieces of smoked salmon over the rice to look like brain. This is the recipe that we used for our sushi rice. Then we used salmon roe to make a line down the center of the brain. My mom told me that part is called the corpus callosum!

This kind of fell apart when we tried to slice it, so we don't have a good picture. But each slice is supposed to have an avocado and cream cheese center with rice and salmon on the outside.

A good kid friendly dish that we made was Pizza Skulls, which are basically calzones. The only bad thing about making these is that you need to have a skull mold. But then, the assembly is super easy. You just roll out pizza dough, lay it in the mold, fill with sauce and cheese, and bake. The best part was that we made them in advance and froze them, so that we had less to do at our actual party.

Don't these look great for Halloween?! Adding dabs of sauce into the eye sockets was my extra special touch!!

It's not Halloween at our house until we make Feet Loaf!!!! Feet loaf is just meat loaf shaped like feet, with onion pieces to make bones and toe nails and ketchup for blood! The Turkey Meatloaf recipe that we use is really delicious, and you obviously don't have to make it as Feet Loaf, but the meatloaf recipe is worth trying. Even people who think that they don't like ground turkey love it!

I swear this tastes better than it looks!

We also used Oreos to make some cute little Halloween treats. To make spiders, we just opened them up and added on black licorice legs. Then we used melted chocolate to glue on mini m&ms for eyes.

I liked the ones with yellow eyes the best.

We also made Oreo bats by breaking a cookie layer in half and using melted chocolate to glue the pieces as wings onto a rolo candy and to add candy eyes.

Breaking the Oreos properly was a pain for these, so we didn't make too many. But they looked adorable!

We assembled lots of treats to make a fun dessert platter. But the best part was DEFINITELY Chocolate Whoopie Pies with Salted Caramel Frosting. These were some of the best whoopie pies we've ever made. And we rolled them in Halloween colored sprinkles to be festive, but they look great without the sprinkles too.

Our chocolate covered strawberry ghosts were very popular. And then we also made Rice Krispie Treats with Halloween themed gummies on top. These would have looked festive with candy corn on top too.

A surprise hit that we tried was an Oreo Icebox Cake. We only made it because we had so many Oreos leftover from making our other treats, but it was a huge hit!!! We added a layer of Nutella to the recipe to add some additional flavor. Then we put Oreo crumbs on top for "dirt" with skull candies to make it look like a Halloween graveyard. But this would be a fun dessert to serve even without the Halloween decorations. Our friend Pete said that he'd make this part of his last meal if he ever had to choose one!

I especially liked the skull Peeps on top!

On Halloween morning, we had Maple Oat Scones. I can send the recipe to anyone who wants it. These were cute and tasted great.

We added jelly blood and eyes because it was Halloween, but these would be great as regular scones too!

We went to another party on Halloween night and brought these Rice Krispy treat eyeballs. We just made our favorite Rice Krispy Treats but shaped them as spheres and dipped them in different colored candy melts and added candy eyes. You could also just use white chocolate and food coloring, which might taste a teeny bit better. But the candy melts are definitely easier.

Candy eyes are very important to have around when you're making Halloween treats!

And finally, there's always the question of what to do with all of our Halloween candy!! We each save a few pieces that we really want and then my mom brings the rest to the hospital. But we usually do some baking with it too. This year we made Leftover Halloween Candy Cookies. We did something similar last year, but these were better. The melted candy corn were especially delicious!

I hope that you enjoyed reading about some of our spooky treats! Now I'm off to start getting organized for Thanksgiving!!!! Happy turkey day everyone!!!!