Exploring Fall Sweets
Adventurous Baking
I know the go to flavor of fall is pumpkin, but hear me out. I think pumpkin is more versatile than just fall and Christmas. For my top 10 favorite fall dessert recipes I’m focussing on dark, sweet flavors. Dark flavor pulls together ingredients with their own bold flavor, makes your mouth water, and you can feel it in your soul. You’ll notice that there is fruit, or an ingredient that can be cultivated in your own garden in these recipes. I have not eschewed chocolate with a firm hand, nearly been focusing on growing my own fruits and vegetables lately. My top 10 fall dessert recipes aren’t the usual suspects of sweets, except maybe a few.
Some of the fall dessert recipes will have landing pages, while others are contained within YouTube how to video details.
Orange Ricotta Pancakes
A heavy taste for a heavy meal
I admit, pancakes are sweet on their own, but just imagine orange and ricotta coming together in a pancake! The richness of the dish makes me crave the heavy dish when I can sit on the couch in a fluffy blanket, moaning because my stomach feels like it will explode. It also has a heavy Italian similarity to the cannoli. So leave the gun, take the pancakes.
The recipe is in the YouTube details.
Lemon Bars
Tangy & sweet, like trick-or-treat
Of all the fruit I am a sucker for lemon sweets, so I can’t make a list without sweet, delicious lemon bars. I also think these are timeless, and can be enjoyed at all times of the year. I’ll give you a tip, I have trouble tempering the rate at which I eat lemon bars and I’ve inhaled more powdered sugar than I would like to admit, so warning, eat slowly and do not inhale.
One of the reasons Preppy Kitchen’s recipe is on my top 10 fall dessert recipes is because of the amazing shortbread crust bouncing off the zing of the lemon filling.
Raspberry Sweet Rolls
A take on cinnamon rolls, hot & dripping in frosting
What’s that you say? Raspberries in sweet rolls? Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. You’ve heard of orange rolls, but those can go with dinner. This is in the tradition of cinnamon rolls, but drip with sweet syrup of the raspberry. And there’s nothing better than fresh fruit in baking. It combines a sweet taste while reducing the required sugar in a dish. Maybe even make these sweet rolls for Halloween as vampire blood rolls.
This recipe uses yeast, so it will take some time. The recipe itself is in the notes of the YouTube video.
Peach Kuchen
Peaches, custard, & shortbread
Kuchen is German for cake. This dish has an interesting name, as it is called a cake, but looks more like a tart. Some of the flavors I picked up whilst living in Europe was the taste for custard. In the U.S. we like to put frosting on everything, while the brits drown it in custard. It’s so good. The custard is also where the kuchen gets its cake-like consistency.
Peaches are one of the more tantalizing ingredients that Germans would put into their cakes.
Plum Galette
Breaking boundaries in fruit focus & baking method
The galette is a French free-type form of pie. It still comes in the shape of a circle, but is made in a baking dish. It is also considered a catch all-type of dish, meaning it can be savory or sweet, depending on what you put inside.
This recipe calls for the plums to be honeyed, deepening the sweetness of the syrup.
Upside Down Blood Orange Cake
Overwhelming flavor with sweetness
Blood oranges are one of my favorite fruit, and beverage. I had a rather bland upbringing food wise, call it the best way to meet the tastes of a family of 5 hungry and loud children. My fascination with blood oranges could be that the red of flesh on the inside of the fruit. It has always been orange. But then you add the taste – mind blown.
What I like about upside down cakes is how the flavor penetrates all the way through the dish and settles on the bottom. Once you flip the dish over, all the sweetness is right there on top. There’s no dry cake you have to get through to get to the sweet goodness at the bottom.
This is another one where the recipe is in the details of the YouTube page.
Pumpkin Rice Pudding
Thick & rich with staple fall flavor
One of the best marketing campaigns I have seen was a rice pudding shop in NYC, they used humor and took the elephant in the room (rice pudding is fattening) and embraced it. “Eating too much can give you a heart attack, ack, ack, ack, ack, ack”. Respect. So naturally, I always have my eye out for a good rice pudding. This made my fall list, due to the pumpkin flavor in a dish you don’t generally see. My preference is to make my own pumpkin puree for this, and then use the pumpkin rinds as serving bowl.
Cinnamon Rolls
Staple fall sweet
Cinnamon rolls on crisp Saturday mornings as you’re cuddle up into a snuggly blanket always remind me of childhood. Of course shortly after this I was kicked outside to rake leaves and pull weeds.
Of all the fall dessert recipes this one pre-ports to be the best cinnamon rolls in the world. I cannot vouch for that as I am still working my way through all the cinnamon rolls around the world. However, they are pretty tasty, and easy to make. There are also helpful tips working the dough throughout the different steps.
Root Vegetable Tart Tatin
Not your ordinary dessert
I was more intrigued by the focus of this recipe, root vegetables? As a sweet? I mainly eat a vegetable based diet, but never mastered all the root vegetables, mostly because they weren’t a common staple in childhood. But, I take this as an opportunity for culinary adventure.
The variety of root vegetables also offers color and texture to this dish.
In the notes on this recipe most folks recommend adding a stronger cheese to pull out more flavor.
Pumpkin Roll
The frosting is the focus here
Speaking of award winning dishes, this fall dessert recipe got me first place in the office bake off, and notoriety for 3 years.
My biggest fear making this recipe is the rolling part. I worry about breaking the cake into bits before it takes a solid rolled form. If you have any tips for me I’m all ears.
This is another recipe from Preppy Kitchen and he has a yummy recipe for the frosting, which is the focus of this dish that complements the rich pumpkin cake.
Thanks for checking out my fall list of Top 10 Favorite Fall Dessert Recipes, check out all of our recipes in the following link!