Celebrating fall

How do you celebrate fall? I like to incorporate apples, and the eating thereof, into my celebration. Thanksgiving is just my kind of holiday- it's all about eating fall foods. Especially apple pie.

Tonight I'm having some friends over for dinner, and because I have a good number of apples at home, I'd planned to bake a pie- basically, another apple ginger cranberry pie, in case Clint and I didn't get enough at Thanksgiving.

Then I was reading Smitten Kitchen, and found this: a caramel apple gingerbread upside down cake. The only upside down cake I've ever had is pineapple, and I'm not a fan (too sickly sweet), but a gingerbread upside cake? ooh.

I made it- it's easy, and I'll let SK tell you about it. I overcooked the caramel a bit, but I don't really think that's a problem for this, since the cake would be baked anyway, and I used more molasses than honey (about 1/6 cup of honey and 1/2 cup of molasses- I ran out of honey), and the batter was really, really tasty. It then smelled really, really tasty. It came out of the oven, cooled for about 10 minutes, and then I got this:

and it looked really, really tasty. And then! There were some stuck-to-the-pan bits that we ate, and the bits were so good, we cursed. Involuntarily. It was that good. I really can't wait to eat this cake tonight.

For Thanksgiving I brought my standard apple ginger cranberry pie and pumpkin pie. Clint said: everyone in my family eats the pumpkin pie, I'm the only one that ever wants apple. When we got there, everyone wanted apple, and only my nephews (I have nephews now!) and I wanted pumpkin. Huh. But they were a big hit, and that's the most important thing.