🍁 Hello Baking Buddy! 🍁

As the leaves in our front yard slowly start to turn a vibrant red, I am reminded that this marks the beginning of "Baking Season!" My favorite time of year.

🍂 Fall Flavor Trends 🍂

As temperatures cool down, there's nothing better than turning on the oven and indulging in the rich, warm flavors of fall.

🎃 Pumpkin Spice Everything: Using a blend of cozy spices, you can make your own pumpkin spice mix and save money. Skipping the line at starbucks, make your own pumpkin spice latte too! Here's all my favorite pumpkin desserts!

🍎 Apple Harvest: Find a local apple orchard near you and pick some delicious red and green beauties. We visit an orchard in Wisconsin with amazing baked goods and a cider brewery. Here's all my favorite apple desserts!

🥧 Warm & Spiced: Warm spices like cardamom, clove, and allspice make every dessert extra comforting. Try these thick and gooey spice brownies, spice cake, caramel pear pie, or spiced cookie sandwiches with milk chocolate filling.

🥒 Sweet or Savory Squash: Gardens are brimming with zucchini and every other variety of squash around here... Try incorporating your favorite harvest vegetables into your next baked treat! We love double chocolate zucchini muffins, pumpkin bread, and gluten free lemon zucchini oat cake!

🌰 Make It Nutty: Pecans and walnuts enhance almost anything containing classic fall flavors. Toast your nuts first to bring out the best flavors (this is called Maillard browning). Our family loves chocolate pecan pie, maple walnut banana bread, and pecan pie muffins.

✏️🏫 Back-to-School

The following recipes are not only delicious, but easy to prepare ahead of time, helping busy parents save time during hectic weeks!

🍱 Lunchbox Treats: Easy, packable baked goods like carrot muffins, chia pudding, and versatile granola bars are perfect for school lunches. Avoid bringing baked goods with peanuts or peanut butter due to allergies.

🥜 After-School Snacks At Home: These peanut butter and jelly muffins are always a hit here! You can also make your own cheesy crackers too!

🥗 Quick & Easy Weeknight Meals: We love eating soup, salad, and a half sandwich! Here's my recipe for easy no-knead bread that just requires a little planning ahead, but minimal effort. My no yeast bread, however, is ready to eat in an hour!

🎒 My friend Amy at Yummy Toddler Food has tons of ideas for school lunch recipes for kids of any age, so check them out if you're struggling with what to make!

🥘 Let's Talk Soup...

♻ Eco-friendly Food Tip: To reduce waste in the kitchen, save your produce scraps like the cut-off ends, peels, and stems of vegetables. Freeze them in a zip-tight gallon bag. Once the bag is full, pour the scraps into a pot and boil on low for an hour or two. Voilà! You have homemade vegetable stock - for free! Use this to make any soup or sauce extra flavorful.

Homemade vegetable stock can also be stored in the freezer for up to three months, making it convenient to save and use later.

Here are our favorite soups to make:​
🥕 Curried Carrot Soup made with coconut milk
🍠 Sweet Potato Soup is easy to make using simple ingredients
🍅 Roasted Red Pepper Tomato Soup to pair with grilled cheese
🥦 Creamy Cheddar Broccoli with cauliflower and carrots
🍲 Sauerkraut Soup with kielbasa, bacon, kohlrabi, onion, and dill

P.S. This handy immersion blender (affiliate link) makes soup season so easy and mess-free! Just blend your soup right in the pot and serve.

📖 Recipe Swap

Do you have a favorite fall baking recipe? Share it with me for a chance to be featured in the next newsletter.

Here's a few recipes shared with me this month:

🌿 Kale, Butternut Squash, and Walnut Galette: This recipe from California Walnuts produces a rustic, savory galette with a buttery walnut flecked crust and a filling of fall vegetables, Gruyere and more walnuts!

🌺 Lemon Bliss Cake with Hibiscus Icing: This cake from Casablanca Cooks consists of 3 parts: a lemon pound cake, a glaze that is applied while the cake is still hot, and a hibiscus icing that is drizzled on top once it has cooled.

🍲 30-Minute Weeknight Avgolemono Soup: This quick weeknight soup from The Mediterranean Dish may start like any ordinary chicken soup–onions, carrots, celery, broth, chicken etc. But–at the very end–is delightfully transformed into a silky, tangy, absolutely unforgettable bowl chicken rice soup, thanks to the addition of Greek avgolemono sauce (egg-lemon sauce.)

📌 Trending on Pinterest

🍑 Peaches and Cream Crumble Bars - The best way to use up any fresh peaches you have from summer!

🌽 Corn Flake Marshmallow Treats - More flavorful than the classic rice krispies bar.

☕ Chocolate Espresso Muffins - The sweetest start to any morning... have your coffee and eat it too!

👶🏻 Ombre Gender Reveal Cake - Perfect for announcing the sex of a new baby or simply creating a fun colored cake for any occasion.

📅 On The Calendar

🍯 National Honey Month: Incorporate honey into your baking! I love making honey poached figs or using a sticky honey glaze on cream scones. Honey also makes an excellent natural sweetener for your morning coffee or tea.

🐝 Fun fact: A single worker honeybee produces approximately 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime. That means around 22,700 bees are needed to fill a single jar of honey!

🍞 National Cinnamon Raisin Bread Day (Sept 16): Try this recipe for homemade cinnamon raisin swirl bread.

🍰 National White Chocolate Day (Sept 22): This white chocolate cake uses white chocolate in the batter and it's topped with a white chocolate and sour cream ganache too!

🥖 What's baking in our test kitchen?

We've discovered the secret to making perfectly soft sandwich buns (both wheat and white)... and the best part is... they stay perfectly soft and fresh for DAYS! Five days, in fact! If you've ever made homemade buns, you'll know they go stale quickly, but not these. Recipes for wheat and white sandwich buns coming soon!

🎂 Perfectly Baked Cakes 🎂​
​This month we're releasing a new guide to help you bake perfect cakes every time - the scientific way! It's loaded with helpful tips, tricks, and my favorite cake recipes! I'm giving it away for a limited time, so grab your copy while it lasts! Watch your inbox for more details soon!

👩‍🍳 Personal Note 💌

I love serving as a resource for you and strive to constantly learn more and become a better baker every day.

While I mostly bake at home in Minnesota, I'm taking a much needed vacation out to Colorado at the end of September to visit friends and family and do some high altitude baking! 🗻

My baking experiment plans include baking the same recipes at three different altitudes:

• Rochester, MN (1250ft elev.) *Home
• Castle Rock, CO (6200ft elev.)
• Fraser, CO (8900ft elev.)

I'll note the differences in baking outcomes and report back to you with full details so we can nerd out together 🤓.

If you also bake at high altitudes, shoot me a message and let me know what seems to be the trickiest recipes for you to bake!

Happy Baking Season,

Stephanie Gonzalez​
​CEO + Creator​
​Pretty. Simple. Sweet.​

P.S. Love these emails? Share them with a friend who loves baking too!

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