Finally...Fall!

You may not want to hear this, but it's officially Fall in our household. Yes - I know it's technically still August and we haven't even gotten to Labor Day. But autumn is my favorite time of year, and really now that kids are back in school, I think I'm completely justified in celebrating the season. Now if you want to talk about RUSHING the seasons along, go visit your local Hobby Lobby store, where they are fully-stocked for Christmas already. Craziness! But that's a whole 'nother conversation.

While Labor Day is the unofficial end of summer for most people, my own personal marker this year (other than back-to-school traffic) was a bachelorette party that I planned in Chicago for one of my best friends, E. With the excitement (and stress) of planning-an-entire-fabulous-weekend-for-a-group-of-18-people-in a far-away-city-I'm-not-familiar-with behind me, I'm focusing all of my obsessive energy on Fall. In case you're curious, the weekend was a complete success. Check out E.'s blog, Voyage On, to see what she thought.

The first weekend after the bachelorette party I decided to ease into Fall with a few small crafty autumn projects (decor pictures to come soon) and a pumpkin recipe that wasn't too pumpkiny. Just to be clear - for me there's no such thing as too pumpkiny (yes, I think "pumpkiny" is a word). However, my lovely husband is not as pumpkin-obsessed as I.  To compromise I picked a recipe that I'd been eyeing since last year - Pumpkin Oreo Donuts from Jocelyn over at Inside BruCrew Life. As if I needed another reason to try them, these donuts can even be considered semi-healthy since they're baked and use applesauce and Greek yogurt in place of oil and eggs.

 

The original recipe was for mini-donuts, but since I only have a standard sized donut pan, that's what I made. It yielded 8 regular donuts, and boy were they good! I can't even describe how moist these donuts are, and the white chocolate and Oreo flavors go ridiculously well with pumpkin! My somwhat pumpkin-averse husband loved them too and said the recipe was definitely a keeper. My parents came into town on Sunday and we had planned to save a donut for each of them to try. These were so good that we could only bring ourselves to save one for my parents to split. Fall is the season of thanksgiving, though, so really they should be thankful they got one at all. :)

If you're anything like us, you'll breeze through the 8 donuts pretty quickly, so you might want to go ahead and make 2 batches right off the bat (especially since they're "healthy"). I followed Jocelyn's directions exactly except for adding extra pumpkin and extra Oreo crumbs to the batter. My changes are reflected in the recipe below. Thanks again to Jocelyn for the awesome idea!

Pumpkin Oreo Donuts

Recipe adapted from Inside BruCrewLife

Yields 8 regular-sized donuts

Ingredients

For the Donuts

1/4 c. salted butter, softened

1/3 c. brown sugar

2 Tbsp. applesauce

1 c. canned pumpkin

1/3 c. Greek vanilla yogurt

1 tsp. vanilla

1 tsp. cinnamon

3/4 tsp. baking powder

3/4 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

1 c. flour

1/2 c. chocolate cookie crumbs

For the Topping

4 oz. white chocolate candy coating (CandiQuik)

1 tsp. shortening

1/2 c. chocolate cookie crumbs

Instructions

1.      Cream the butter and sugar. Add the applesauce, pumpkin, vanilla, and yogurt and mix until creamy. In a bowl, sift together the baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, flour, and cookie crumbs. Stir into the creamed mixture gently.

2.      Place the donut batter in a Ziplock bag and cut the tip off. Spray the mini donut pan with non-stick spray and fill each cavity at least 3/4 full. Bake at 325º for 10+ minutes until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Place a wire cooling rack flush over the donut pan and turn upside town to flip the donuts out.

3.      In a microwave safe bowl, heat the white chocolate coating with the shortening for 30 seconds and stir. Repeat again for 20 seconds and stir. One at a time, dip the tops of the donuts into the melted chocolate and sprinkle with cookie crumbs.