Every year, right around the holidays, I try my hand at making another variety of chocolate truffles or fudge. Fudge is my old standby though, as I have a great base recipe that I have been using since high school and it is very easy to adapt with some new flavors. This year, I made Winter Spice Fudge, which has a lot of gingerbread and cinnamon flavors and Irish Cream Coffee Fudge, which isn’t very boozy but ended up very yummy. Very easy to make and very foolproof with just a few ingredients.
So what do you get when you cross pumpkin pie, pecan pie and crumble bars? Well…these things! And I threw in some maple syrup just for good measure! I had found pumpkin butter at Trader Joes, and without any idea what to do with it, I bought a jar. While it has the unfortunate consistency of baby food, it tastes amazing (and *nothing* like baby food!) so I decided to make these Maple Pumpkin Butter and Pecan Crumble Bars. They are simply fab! Perfect thing to add to your Thanksgiving dessert and can be made in advance.
Sometimes you just need something easy but still homemade to bring to an event. Enter this recipe for a Quick and Easy Apple Streusel Pie. While there are really impressive decorations for pies these days, this is just a basic “coffee cake-like” streusel on the top. Think of it a little like a cross between a pie and a crumble. It does take about 2 hours, start to finish (if you count the hour-ish of baking time), but it really is fool proof.
Have I ever mentioned that I love popcorn? Really, I love it in all forms… butter and salt like the movie theater, kettle corn with the whole sweet and salty thing, I’ve got recipes up on this here page for maple corn and spicy popcorn too. One recipe that I haven’t posted though is this one: straight forward traditional caramel corn. Yep, love that too. This recipe is actually very simple. Note the comment I have in there about popcorn *type*.
I know, I know, I *just* mentioned the other day that Halloween isn’t really my thing, and here I am posting the second skull-themed baked good in as many days. Mainly, this is because I wanted to use my skull pan that was given to me, and sure, why not, let’s make something red-velvet-y … I don’t do that nearly enough. The cakes turned out almost too fluffy and very airy, but they did taste good. And there is something satisfying about biting into a skull. Yeah, ok, that last part is a little weird to write. I promise I’m not a vampire.