The first time I made pumpkin pie from scratch, I burned the crust, undercooked the filling, and cried a little in my kitchen at 11 p.m. the night before Thanksgiving. My mother-in-law was arriving in ten hours. I remember standing over that sad, jiggly, scorched-edge pie thinking, “This is how it ends.” It didn’t end…
There’s a specific moment in my kitchen every fall where every conversation in the house just stops. It’s the second the butter in my saucepan turns from foamy yellow to that deep amber color, and this nutty, toasty smell rolls through the whole downstairs. My husband will yell “is that the brown butter cake?” from…
My husband caught me eating a square of this pumpkin oatmeal snack cake for breakfast, standing at the counter in my pajamas, and gave me a look like I’d been caught sneaking cookies before noon. I told him, with a completely straight face, that it has oats in it, so it basically counts as oatmeal….
A few Thanksgivings ago, my sister-in-law sat at our dessert table staring at the pie options with that polite, resigned look I’ve seen on her face a hundred times. She’s vegan, and every holiday dessert table is basically a minefield of butter and eggs she has to quietly skip. That year, I’d made a vegan…
I made this pumpkin snack cake for the first time on a Tuesday I don’t even remember the date of, because it wasn’t a special occasion at all. It was raining, my kids were bouncing off the walls after being cooped up inside, and I had exactly half a can of pumpkin puree sitting in…
I burned my first apple crisp cheesecake. Not “a little too dark around the edges” burned — I mean I set off the smoke alarm and had to open every window in my apartment in the middle of October, standing there in a hoodie while my downstairs neighbor texted to ask if everything was okay….
A few years ago, I signed up to bring “something homemade” to my kid’s school holiday market, and then promptly panicked because I had exactly one free evening and zero desire to babysit a candy thermometer. I needed something that looked impressive, tasted like fall, and didn’t require a chemistry degree. That’s how this pumpkin…
I used to have a standing Saturday morning ritual: walk to the coffee shop down the street, order a pumpkin spice latte, and sit by the window with a book while the espresso machine hissed in the background. Then that coffee shop closed, and I spent an embarrassing amount of time mourning a seasonal drink….
My mother-in-law is a tough critic. She’s been baking since before I was born, and she has opinions about everything from my pie crust to how I hold a whisk. So the first time I brought this pumpkin cream cheese swirl bread to Thanksgiving, I was bracing myself. She took one bite, went quiet for…
The first time I made these soft pumpkin chocolate chip muffins, I wasn’t even trying to make muffins. I had half a can of pumpkin puree left over from a pie disaster (long story, involving a soggy crust and a lot of muttering), and I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. So I opened…
I signed up for the fall bake sale at my kid’s school without really thinking it through. Three dozen cookies, due Friday morning, and I was scrolling through recipes at midnight on Wednesday like it was some kind of emergency. I had a can of pumpkin puree from a Thanksgiving prep run gone too early,…
The first time I made pumpkin spice cinnamon rolls, I wasn’t even trying to be seasonal. It was late October, I had half a can of pumpkin puree left over from a batch of muffins, and I couldn’t bring myself to throw it out. So I did what any slightly chaotic home baker does at…