Apple Spice Cake with Caramel Sauce

Fall is my favorite time of the year. Football season begins and the chill in the air brings out the beautiful fall foliage. It means the holidays are just around the corner and the foods and flavors of the season are the best. This dessert (or breakfast if you wish) has many of those fall flavors that I love like apples, cinnamon and caramel. I even baked it in the Fall Harvest Bundt Pan that I picked up from Williams-Sonoma last year to make it even more festive!

The cake is from the King Arthur Flour recipe for Apple-Spice Cake. I did not use the cherry juice concentrate nor the Cake Enhancer and I chose to use pecans instead of walnuts and it still turned out wonderful. I also decided to make a caramel sauce for the cake instead of using the glaze from the recipe. Topped with a little whipped cream and served with a pumpkin spice latte and I think I could be in heaven.

Caramel Sauce
makes ~1 1/2 cups

1 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
3/4 cup heavy cream
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 teaspoon fleur de sel

In a 2-qt saucepan, combine the sugar, water and corn syrup and bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Boil over medium high heat until the syrup is deep amber in color, about 8 minutes. Remove the saucepan from the heat and carefully whisk in the cream, butter and salt. Let the caramel cool to room temperature. Sauce will keep in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.

Pita Bread

I know it's been a while since I've posted. I haven't stopped cooking, I just haven't been as good about taking photos of the food. But when I made homemade pita bread for the first time today, they just looked too good not to take a picture of and share. Of course, since pita is a bread, I went to King Arthur Flour's website for the recipe.

They were surprisingly easy to make and turned out much better than what you get from the store. I followed their recipe as written and used instant yeast, which is the only yeast I bake with since it doesn't require "proofing". I placed the rolled pitas and parchment and baking them on a half sheet pan. I was able to fit three on the pan so it took three batches to bake off all eight pitas. All but one of my pitas "popped".

While good on their own, I'm looking forward to stuffing them with balsamic chicken, sun-dried tomatoes and lettuce for lunch. They would also be great with hummus too.