As fall starts to creep in, one of my favorite fruits become ripe, the apple. Apples are an amazing ingredients to cook and bake with all of the sweetness and great texture. These homemade apple pancakes are a great easy breakfast for these upcoming fall mornings. The pancakes come out light and fluffy and the apple topping adds a great apple flavor and sweetness with the butter and brown sugar sauce.  It's a great fruit filled breakfast that even kids will love. 

Looking for a great meal for the holidays. These cranberry apple stuffed pork chops have a great sweet and savory flavor. The easy cranberry apple stuffing is a breeze to make and cooking the pork chops take only a few minutes to have great easy dinner. If fresh cranberries are not available you can rehydrate dried ones in some hot chicken stock or water. Check out the recipe below in the post.

As the holiday season is slowly creeping toward us, we will find our self involved in work potlucks and large family event. Most of the time you need a tasty easy dish you can bring with you. These apple streusel are very easy to make and require no par-baking of the cookie crust which makes preparation very quick. The bars have a great spiced apple flavor that is very tender and has a great crunch with the cookie crust and streusal topping that gets golden brown in the oven. This is a great change to the normal apple crisp. Check out the recipe below in this post.  

Apple hand pies are a great fall dessert. they are similar to a apple turnover, with the exception of using a pie crust instead of puff pastry like a turnover.  These apple hand pies are coated in a sugar glaze that gives a great boost of sweet as you bite through the buttery and flaky crust. They are great for a occasion where you are on the go or a fall picnic where you don't want to use plates. I enjoy them for a easy breakfast when I am going out the door, its a great wake me up. Check out the recipe below.

The Waldorf salad was introduced at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel back in the 1890's and has become a classic american salad that is still very popular. The Waldorf salad is a fruit and nut salad that is covered with a creamy dressing served traditionally with a bed of lettuce. The Waldorf salad has had many different variations over the years. Many use dried fruit like raisins with the apples or fresh grapes that give some extra juiciness and sweetness that goes great with crunch of the walnuts and crisp apples. Check out the recipe below at the bottom of this post.

The classic Cobb salad is a classic American salad. There is many different ways of making it but it tends to be made with chopped salad greens, tomato, crisp bacon, boiled, chicken breast, hard-boiled eggs, avocado, chives, Roquefort or Gorgonzola cheese, and red-wine vinaigrette.

​This autumn Cobb salad takes the classic salad and adds some seasonal changes that makes it just as good as the original. In place of the simple red wine vinaigrette, there is a creamy pecan maple dressing that is full flavored and complements the salad completely. The salad can be made as one large salad or can be made into many separate salads. I make this salad as simple food prep lunch for the week with the dressing on the side. Check out the recipe below in the post.

As from Minnesota, we are a big art of the discovering different kinds of apples especially for northern climates. The most popular is the Honeycrisp, but almost every one is great flavored apple. The best Minnesota apples to bake with are haralson  and zestar.  This apple upside-down bread is a fantastic apple dish. It can make a great breakfast but also can make a great dessert warm with a side of cold vanilla ice cream. The apples come out caramelized and the sugary glaze hardens slightly when it cools and covers all the sides as you flip it over onto a dish. Check out the recipe below in post.

My favorite fall flavor is apples, it can be used in so many different ways so I had to do one last recipes with apples. These apple spiced thumb print cookies are flaky and full of rich butter and spices plus the simple apple filling the makes these taste great and full of flavor.

In honor of the National Apple which is today, October 21th I made these Apple-Walnut Cream Cheese walnuts. For me, the best art of apple pie is the last bite with all the crust and the last of the apple pie filling.  These tartlets have that bit in each of the 2-3 bites these tartlets take to eat and they are quite easy to make, taking about 30-40minutes for start to finish.

Using a 2-1/2" to 3" biscuit cutter or a cup with same size, cut out 12 rounds for each of the tartlets. If you are going to use homemade dough, try to get the thicken to about an 1/8" thick for the crust. Place each of the rounds in the bottom of a greased muffin pan pressing them tight against the bottom.

Make the apple filling by cooking the apples, sugar, walnuts and spices until almost tender and the liquid has mostly evaporated into a thick syrup. Make the cream cheese filling with a spoon or a mixer if needed. Add a teaspoon of each of the filling to the pie crust rounds, I just got each portions of the apples in each of the rounds and added the cream cheese on top.

Bake the tartlets for 15-20 minutes until the crust around the edges begins to brown and the cream cheese mixture is set into the apples. let them cool for about 5mins in the pan before removing gently.