About Our Easy Fall Dessert Recipes

The easy fall dessert recipes listed below feature classic seasonal ingredients like apples, pears, and warm, fragrant spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and ginger. We’ve included a classic apple Betty, a beautiful apple-topped coffee cake, a gingerbread upside-down cake, a galette filled with spiced pears, and an apple pudding cake.

When it comes to making desserts, we like easy recipes that aren’t overly sweet, and this collection is no exception. Each recipe relies primarily on the natural sweetness of the fruit and minimizes the amount of added sugar as much as possible.

Choosing Fruit for Baking

When choosing what pears or apples to use for baking, taste and texture matter most. With over 7,500 types of apples and 3,000 varieties of pears grown worldwide, we have some suggestions to get you started.

Best Pears for Baking

• Anjou pears are commonly found in grocery stores and are available most of the year. Although they have a mild flavor, these bright green beauties’ firm texture holds up well in pies and tarts.
• Bosc pears are dense and crisp. Often a favorite in cooking because they retain their shape, these pears also bring a sweet and woodsy flavor to fall dessert recipes.
• Bartlett pears have an aromatic pear flavor and smooth texture making them perfect for delicate baked goods like cakes and muffins.

TIP: To check pears for ripeness, press your thumb close to the stem, if it gives, the pear is ripe. Always refrigerate ripe pears if you’re not going to use them right away.

Best Apples for Baking

• Braeburn apples are both sweet and tart. They keep their firm texture when baked in pies, but also contribute a wonderfully crisp tang to applesauce.
• Honeycrisp apples are sweet and juicy, but their crisp firm flesh stays together in fall dessert recipes.
• Golden Delicious apples are sweet and mellow with a rich apple flavor after baking.
• Granny Smith apples are one of the most popular baking apples because it is crisp, tart, and tangy. To enhance the appley characteristics of a dish, mix Granny Smiths with sweeter apple varieties like Golden Delicious or Braeburn.

Check out our Guide to Apple Varieties to discover the best uses for other common types of apples.

Easy Apple Coffee Cake

Topped with a spiral of apple slices and cinnamon sugar, this simple coffee cake makes a beautiful presentation for brunch or dessert.

Yield: 8 servings
Total time: 40 minutes
Key ingredients: Golden delicious apples, butter, cinnamon, sugar

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Easy Pear Galette

This easy pear galette is a rustic fall dessert made by folding a lightly-sweetened, buttery tart crust around a juicy filling of spiced pears.

Yield: 8 servings
Total time: 2 hrs 10 minutes (20 min hands-on)
Key ingredients: Pears, cinnamon, butter, flour, sugar

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Apple Brown Betty

Our apple brown betty is an easy, layered dessert of tart apple slices, brown sugar, buttered breadcrumbs, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

Yield: 6 servings
Total time: 1 hour
Key ingredients: Apples, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, panko, butter

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Spiced Apple Pudding Cake

Flavored with fall spices and plump raisins, this apple cake is easy to make, deliciously moist, and great served with a scoop of ice cream.

Yield: 16 servings
Total time: 1 hour
Key ingredients: Apples, cider, golden raisins, cinnamon, nutmeg, butter, sugar, eggs

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Apple Gingerbread Upside Down Cake

This easy apple gingerbread upside-down cake is richly flavored with spices and topped with a layer of buttery, brown-sugar apples.

Yield: 10 servings
Total time: 50 minutes
Key ingredients: Apples, cinnamon, ginger, allspice, molasses, buttermilk

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