Fall Baking

With Thanksgiving on its way in only a few short weeks, we're offering ideas for a turkey day dessert spread to last the entire day. We have options to include for breakfast, snack and after dinner dessert with the help of these 3 key Nestle® ingredients for fall baking: NESTLÉ® TOLL HOUSE® Pumpkin Spice Morsels, NESTLÉ® CARNATION® Evaporated Milk, 15oz., and LIBBY’S® 100% Pure Pumpkin, 15oz. Keep reading for all of the fun details...

NESTLÉ® TOLL HOUSE® Pumpkin Spice Morsels are being offered for a limited time. The pumpkin spice morsels add just the right amount of cinnamon and spice to enhance your fall baking.

Wee purchased everything we needed to create this festive fall dessert display, including; banners, decor, straws, baking cups, candies, pumpkin crate, fox ramekins, and all of our baking supplies.

As you can imagine, my house smelled heavenly of pumpkin spice with pumpkin spice candies, breads, muffins, pies and spiced pears.

We'll start small and build our way through the party- starting with the pumpkin spice/butterscotch/chocolate squares with the sunflower toppers.

I like to pick up small silicon molds when I find them. This square one is perfect to make bite sized candies. I melted NESTLÉ® TOLL HOUSE® Pumpkin Spice Morsels. Butterscotch Morsels and Semi-sweet Chocolate Morsels and layered them in that order in the mold. Let the morsels set and pop out of the mold. Flip the candies over and top with the pre-made sunflower toppers.

With the candies setting, I combined the ingredients to make my mini pumpkin bunt cakes.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins (or mini bunt cakes)
3 1/2 cups flour

2 tea baking soda

2 tea Cinnamon

1 tea nutmeg

1/2 tea ginger

1/2 tea cloves

1 3/4 cup sugar

1 cup butter

4 eggs

1 can pumpkin
2 cups chocolate chips

Cream the sugar, butter, eggs, pumpkin in one bowl and add the dry ingredients in another bowl. Combine. Bake 25min at 350F (baking times may vary).

For the remaining batter, I added NESTLÉ® TOLL HOUSE® Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels and lined a muffin pan with baking cups. While the mini bunts and muffins were baking, I started mixing the frosting to place between the pumpkin halves to form a whole pumpkin.

I found a recipe for frosting using NESTLÉ® CARNATION® Evaporated Milk, 15oz. on Nestle's Very Best Baking website. I remember opening the cans of creamy NESTLÉ® CARNATION® Evaporated Milk when I was a kid baking with my mom. Ready to assemble:

The green leaves and stems were cut from pre-made green fondant with a mini leaf cookie cutter.

Pipe the creamy frosting in the center of the bottom half of the pumpkin and place the top. Leave some space from the edge so the weight of the top doesn't spread too far over the edges. Drizzle the tops with remaining melted NESTLÉ® TOLL HOUSE® Pumpkin Spice Morsels and place the fondant accents.

We also made Friendship Bars - because when you give them to someone, they are automatically your friend! They are insanely good!

Friendship Bar Recipe:

8 c. Rice Krispies
2 pkgs. mini marshmallows
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1/2 c. butter
14 oz. (1 bag) caramels

Melt butter and 1 1/2 packages mini marshmallows. Pour over Rice Krispies. Press 2/3 into 10x15 inch pan. Melt caramels and milk. Pour over cereal mixture. Pat remaining cereal mixture over and press down with buttered fingers or spray spatula with non-stick spray, letting caramel layer show through. Cut into 48 bars.

The spiced pears are a nice addition for a Thanksgiving brunch. Simmer pears in 1 cup of orange juice, a few whole cloves. While the pears simmers, I started some diced apples simmering in my favorite chai with a splash of organic maple syrup on the stovetop for the mini pies.

It wouldn't be Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie! Here is a pumpkin filling recipe for the mini hand pies using LIBBY’S® 100% Pure Pumpkin. LIBBY’S® 100% Pure Pumpkin, 15 oz. is a superfood rich in vitamin A and a good source of fiber. It's a feel good food!