Fall Lessons With a Side of Caramel Apple Dump Cake

Anyone who has spent more than 10 minutes around me knows that I love Jesus, coffee, and fall. My family, of course, knows this better than anybody. They know I like my coffee hot and the weather cool and will often tease me about both my coffee habit and my obsession with the season. It was during one of these moments, as I was carrying in my 74 boxes of fall décor from the garage, that the 14 year old man child stopped laughing at me long enough to ask, really, why did I love fall so much.

I paused for a minute and pondered the question. Like everyone else, I love the cooler temperatures and the fall colors, but it’s something more.

The truth is I love the way the light falls across the earth in autumn and bathes everything in golden hues. I love standing on the porch with a cup of hot coffee in my hand and feeling the first cold front when it blows in across the Texas landscape. I love the first fire of the season in my fireplace, feeling the Coconuts cold hands and noses when they come in from outside, and I love smelling caramel apple spice dump cake in the crockpot, which, by the way is the easiest, bestest, yummiest, make-your-whole-house-smell-like-fall, dessert from the crockpot EVER….but I digress...more on that below...

But most of all, I love that the trees know it's fall. They know that winter will soon be here and so, with the shortening of the days, they begin to prepare. The gorgeous fall colors we see on their leaves is really the trees slowly beginning to choke off the nutrients to their leaves, causing them to turn color and fall off. In all actuality, the leaves aren’t falling. It’s the trees pushing them off. During the winter when there is limited sun and water, keeping those leaves would be a death sentence as they would soon become drained of all their precious nutrients and eventually die. And so they drop the old in order to survive and prepare for the new.

So, I guess my short answer would be that I love fall because it’s Jesus calling out to us through His creation to let go of the old. Reminding us that we can't survive our winter seasons clinging on to the past. It’s hearing Him gently whisper to push away the things that will hold us back and embrace change because even when it’s painful, it still can be beautiful.

And if living through a pandemic has taught me anything, it’s to put my trust completely in Jesus and release all things to Him.

For right now though, I’m going to go whip up that Caramel Apple Dump Cake I mentioned earlier. Care to grab a cup of coffee and join me?

Caramel Apple Dump Cake - Recipe adapted from Tasty Co

INGREDIENTS

2 cans caramel apple pie filling (21 oz each can) 

1 box Spice cake mix (15.25 oz) 

8 oz (2 sticks) Butter (You could get away with 3/4 of a cup but I'm from the south where there's no such thing as too much butter)

INSTRUCTIONS

Lightly spray the inside of your crockpot. I use coconut oil spray. 

Dump caramel apple pie filling into prepared dish and spread out evenly.

Sprinkle on dry spice cake mix.  

Place butter on top. You can melt it first or cut it up. I’m lazy so I just throw the butter in on top whole.

Cook on high for 2.5-3 hours depending on your crockpot.

Optional: Blue Bell homemade vanilla! This really shouldn’t be optional, it’s that good.