Autumn Baking

The inspirational prompt this week over at life through the lens is "what autumn means to me".  When I think about autumn, my mind immediately conjures up bright orange pumpkins and red and gold leaves.  Color is the first thing that occurs to me.  Then I think of coziness - crisp mornings and getting snugly with some knitting or a book.  This time of year I start to turn inwards, both in my thoughts and in preparing for winter cocooning.  And of course, I think of autumn baking!  Being able to turn the oven on without melting.

I tried out a couple new recipes.  I had to!  I needed something to take a picture of;)  This one is a Brioche Plum Tart from Dorie Greenspan's "Baking from My Home to Yours".  I don't have this cookbook yet, but it's on my wish list.   I can't wait to dig into this; brioche is my favorite dough (especially after it's baked!)

This is a Rosemary Olive Oil Cake.  I know what you're thinking, "huh?"  Well trust me; it's good!  It has dark chocolate chunks baked in, which I almost didn't do, because I would have been happy with the rosemary.  DH loves him some chocolate though, so I did it, and was pleasantly surprised.  The flavor is unusual; the rosemary and the chocolate work really well together.

The recipe calls for baking the cake in a fluted tart pan or a 4 1/2" X 13" loaf pan. I don't have a fluted tart pan, and my loaf pan was about 3 inches too short.  So I used the loaf pan and poured the extra batter into a mini springform pan.  One thing that drew me to the recipe was the claim that it only took 10 minutes to get it into the oven.  Well, that cook is more organized than I; it did take longer than 10 minutes, but not too much longer;)

There you have my two cents on what autumn is all about; tell me, what does autumn mean to you?