Bites from other Blogs

Apple and pears are both popular fall ingredients that showed up on lots of blogs this week – including here at Baking Bites with my Chai Spiced Apple Crisp and Salted Caramel Apple Mug Cake. When flavors are so connected with a particular season, sometimes you just want to put them in everything. Fortunately, there is plenty of fall baking inspiration out there and here are a few to start with.

• Apple a Day starts off this week with a Praline Apple Bread. This moist, sweet quick bread is packed with apples and toasted pecans. It is topped with a praline glaze made with brown sugar, butter and more pecans. This extra layer of sweetness makes the bread a little bit more special – like something you could bring out for guests at a holiday brunch – by dressing it up a bit. That said, you don’t need an excuse to serve yourself a slice for breakfast.
• Spicy Southern Kitchen baked Butterscotch Apple Bars with Caramel Sauce, an easy to make recipe that will appeal to any apple dessert fan. The ultra-buttery bars are packed with brown sugar, fresh apples and butterscotch chips. To balance the sweetness of the butterscotch chips, you could use extra tart apples in a dessert like this one, such as Granny Smiths, or just use it as an excuse to top a warm slice of these apple bars with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream in addition to all that caramel sauce.
• My Kitchen Snippet‘s little Pear Tarts are a simple, flavorful way to showcase fresh pears. The single serving tarts are filled with a brown sugar and pear filling that really highlights the flavor of the pear. The homemade crust is ultra light and makes a nice contrast to the sweet filling. You could make these tarts in a variety of different pans. Mini tart pans, of course, are a great choice if you have some on hand, but you could also use mini muffin pans or regular muffin pans for homemade mini tarts without special equipment.
• The Fennel Panna Cotta with Spiced Pears from Ladyface Blog is a dressed up dessert that puts pears in the spotlight. Panna cotta is a very light cream dessert that is held together with gelatin but similar in texture to a custard. This one is infused with fennel and takes on a mild licorice flavor. It’s good on its own, but that fennel flavor works very well with the pumpkin pie spice seasoning the lightly cooked pears that are used to finish it off.
• If you handed me one of Sprinkle Bakes‘ Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Caramel Apples, I’m not sure that I could take a bite because they look almost too good to eat. The tart apples are dipped in a velvety caramel and then covered in chocolate chip cookie dough. The dough is made without eggs, so it is perfectly safe to eat in its uncooked form. This dessert is like combining two childhood favorites in one beautiful package.
• And if you need to wash all those fall desserts down with something, consider making yourself a Chocolate Chai Tea Latte from Brewed Daily. The drink is a homemade version of one that is on the fall menu at Starbucks right now and is a combination of hot chocolate and chai tea. It’s rich and just spicy enough to warm you up on a cool night.