Fall

Despite the warm weather we’ve been enjoying in Southern California, a recent trip to my local grocery store reminded me that fall is here – pyramid-like mounds of pumpkins filled the entrance, flanked by bins of apples of every variety.

Although apples are available all year, they are particularly sweet and delicious this time of year. I generally mark apple picking season with a home-baked double crust pie, but some people still find it a daunting task. If you’re one of them, make apple crisp your signature fall dish.

This is one of my favorite recipes because it produces a thicker layer of “crisp” – which frankly is the best part. The chewy, buttery, caramel flavored brown sugar oatmeal laced layer compliments the apples perfectly. Choose a variety of apples from your local growers – and try to choose organic.

The average conventionally grown apple has more pesticide residue on it than any other fruit or vegetable. According to the Environmental Working Group‘s analysis of USDA data, “pesticides showed up on 98 percent of the more than 700 apple samples tested (yes, they were washed).”

On cold days nothing gives me more comfort than hot soup. The flavor combination that I find most comforting in soups is sweet and savory. It's an ideal pairing in many foods that have come to represent autumn. Certain vegetables like sweet potatoes and squashes are all made more flavorful with a touch of sweet, be it from sugar or other sweeteners such as honey or molasses.

Carrots also benefit from being paired with sweetness and even spiciness. But I add no sweeteners to this carrot soup. Its sweetness is all made possible naturally from a specific blend of ingredients. The soup is made all the more potent and aromatic with the addition of fresh ginger and a distinctive blend of Middle-Eastern spices that carry warm and nutty profiles. It's the perfect combination to elevate the humble carrot to new flavor heights.

German grandmothers mixing up sweet yeast dough to form coffee cakes filled with fresh fruit of the season and rich, creamy custard made with real cream have been passing along the kuchen tradition for generations.

If authentic kuchen, which is a German word for “cake,” has been a common thread weaving through your family for decades, you probably won’t appreciate this recipe. The only kuchen my family eats comes to our table as a gift from an expert peach kuchen-maker who works with my husband.

The simplicity of this Quick Apple Kuchen recipe caught my attention as I browsed through an old cookbook I inherited from my mom’s extensive library. The book is so old, it refers to margarine as oleo. Up until 1952, U.S. law required margarine producers to label their product “oleomargarine.” But, the book is not so old that bakers couldn’t find cake mix in their grocery store.

Years ago I made an oatmeal cake that was moist, dense and delicious with a thick layer of cream cheese frosting slathered over the top. When we had out-of-town friends staying with us last week, I thought of that cake that I haven’t made in years when I served baked oatmeal for breakfast one morning.

I flipped through my recipe file and found the cake recipe that I’d clipped from a newspaper many years ago. I added a seasonal touch to the cake with the addition of chopped, locally grown apples. Since I had a ripe banana in the freezer, I stirred that into the batter, too. A bit of cinnamon added to the cream cheese frosting turned the cake into an autumn treat.

Oatmeal, tart apples, cinnamon and banana paired with cream cheese — can’t get much better — unless you add some toasted chopped pecans. I shared the cake with others and discovered that a short length of cinnamon stick poked into each piece of cake worked well as a support for plastic wrap, preventing the plastic from sticking to the frosting and ruining its attractiveness. Once you taste this cake, you may choose not to share.