When the leaves turn and the temperature drops, my baking passion returns from its August exile. By summer's end, the lure of sunshine keeps me out of the kitchen and in the garden: mowing, planting, weeding, and eventually harvesting. The heat thrown off by the oven in a kitchen with a substandard connection to the house heat and a/c also squelches any enthusiasm for fruit pies. I'd rather sweat in the sunshine with a breeze and my flowers than over the stove while baking with flour.

But now, aside from bizarre weather patterns giving us 70-degree days, the kitchen is so cool I wrack my brain for something to bake to make use of that radiated heat.

Philadelphia's many farmers' markets provide, if not a glut, then a bountiful supply of crisp apples of many varieties. Jewish apple cake has been my favorite cake since my childhood. It's an easy cake to make, and only gets tricky when layering the apple slices and batter in the pan, and it's none the worse for simply mixing the apples into the batter before pouring into the pan. There's traditional, two-crust apple pie; for a change, there's this single-crust Apfelkuchen with almond glaze or a caramel-apple phyllo tart. When there are simply too many apples, Anne Mendelson has the perfect recipe for applesauce (which freezes well).

Pumpkin is always appropriate to the season, especially this super-moist, nearly creamy pumpkin bread; I like to substitute some brown sugar for the white and add a bit of allspice. If Fall means gingersnaps to you, try some molasses spice spritz or gingerbread.

Sometimes what makes a Fall cookie is more the shape: a good cut-out cookie like Ausstecherle (sour-cream cut-outs) or Mürbteigplätzen (rich sugar cookies) or even shortbread. Most cookie-cutter sets will have something for Fall. The really old sets had a turkey, which was easily mistaken for a Christmas rooster. When your grandmother uses every cookie cutter in the set, you don't question a rooster in the Christmas cookie tin any more than you question the Presidents' Day axe or the Pentecost fish. My inherited cookie press was limited to mostly Christmas motifs and the card suits — they must have played a lot of cards in the 50s — but the newer models from Wilton have patterns for most major holidays, including a cute pumpkin.

Anything brown can be decorated with red, orange or yellow jimmies or colored sugar and proudly declared to be a Fall cookie. New-this-year chocolate-orange lebkuchen, chocolate-oatmeal truffles, and my favorite cake, chocolate roll, all fit this bill. The lebkuchen are an my personal version of a century-old German tradition. The chocolate-oatmeal truffles are quick and easy, and don't even require an oven.

When an oven full of cookies just isn't enough to warm you up quickly, a hot drink is called for. Sure, there's always hot cocoa, which, when homemade, has the benefit of you controlling how much sugar and cocoa you put in, and whether you want a splash of cream or opt for skim milk. You can even make a vegan version using soy or rice milk, but be sure to heat it only to steaming.

Minty white hot chocolate was all the rage in the chain coffeeshops and cafes a few years ago. It's easy enough to make at home, and you can use the $4 you would have spent on a good bar of chocolate, and miss all those chemical tastes. (I know some people do like artificial flavors. More power to them.)

To really get into the mood for the season, choose hot apple cider or Glüwein, a German spiced wine. I serve hot apple cider as a "special something" at Thanksgiving when everyone is arriving, or even just for my son and myself when we get a break from a too-busy week. Germans serve Glüwein at outdoor fall and winter festivals. There are many, many outdoor festivals, from the Fall flea market to the Christkindlmarkt to New Year's Eve. All are that much more gemütlich with a warming glass of hot, spiced wine.

Of course, there are some people who think that Fall is the time to start readying for Christmas. These are not necessarily the people who put up their lights the day after Halloween, or set up the tree (complete with presents) Black Friday. They are planning what to bake, and what ingredients they'll need. They quietly candy peel to be ready to bake fruitcake the next weekend, or mix and freeze Pfefferkuchen dough.

But I wouldn't know anyone like that.