Thanksgiving morning is the one day of the year when the oven is spoken for before anyone has had coffee. These seven apple breakfast recipes all cook in the air fryer, so the turkey keeps its spot and breakfast still comes out warm, golden, and smelling like cinnamon. Every one of them is from Fork To Spoon, and most are on the table in 30 minutes or less.
A few use shortcuts you can keep in the fridge the night before (pizza dough, puff pastry, crescent dough, tortillas), which is exactly what you want when the house is full and the counter space is not.
1. Air Fryer Apple Coffee Cake
This is the one to have sitting on the counter all morning. Chopped green apple and cinnamon run through a soft, moist batter that bakes in an 8×8 air fryer-safe pan at 320°F, and the air fryer gives it a lightly crisp golden top under the crumb topping and glaze. Slice it, leave the knife next to it, and let people graze while the turkey goes in.
Get the Recipe: Air Fryer Apple Coffee Cake
2. Air Fryer Apple Pie Cheesecake Tacos
Flour tortillas get cut into small rounds, dipped in egg and cinnamon-sugar graham cracker crumbs, and air fried at 350°F over a folded-foil “taco holder” until they set into crisp little shells. Each one is filled with a blended cream cheese and apple pie spice filling, topped with apple pie filling, and finished with cinnamon sugar and a caramel drizzle. One batch makes about 15, the shells cool on a rack while you work, and this is the recipe to hand the kids for assembly.
Get the Recipe: Air Fryer Apple Pie Cheesecake Tacos
3. Air Fryer Caramel Apple Cinnamon Rolls (Pizza Dough, 30 Min)
A ball of refrigerated pizza dough is the whole shortcut. Roll it into a 12×8 rectangle, spread it with cinnamon brown-sugar butter, scatter diced apple tossed in salted caramel sauce over the top, roll it up, and cut six rolls. They air fry on parchment at 300°F for 10 minutes and then 350°F for 10 more, so the centers cook through before the tops brown, then get a powdered sugar icing or a caramel drizzle.
The Thanksgiving trick: these freeze well before baking. Roll and cut them on Wednesday, wrap each one, and air fry from frozen on Thursday morning.
Get the Recipe: Air Fryer Caramel Apple Cinnamon Rolls
4. Air Fryer Apple Rings with Puff Pastry (Ready in 25 Min)
Apple slices cut into rings, wrapped in ½-inch strips of puff pastry, brushed with egg white, dipped in cinnamon sugar, and air fried at 380°F for 6 to 8 minutes. They look like apple donuts and eat like a handheld apple pie. Use Granny Smith or Honeycrisp so the rings hold their shape, brush the slices with lemon juice while you wrap so they don’t brown, and work in batches so the pastry crisps. Put out a bowl of caramel for dipping.
Get the Recipe: Air Fryer Apple Rings with Puff Pastry
5. Air Fryer Caramel Apple Danish (Cream Cheese Filling)
Crescent dough is pressed into flat rounds with a rolled-up edge, filled with sweetened cream cheese, diced apple, apple pie spice, and chopped caramel candies, and air fried at 375°F for 6 to 8 minutes. The caramels melt into the filling as it cooks, and a drizzle of caramel sauce goes on at the end. It’s about 18 minutes start to finish and makes 4 large or 8 small danish.
For the holiday, assemble them the night before, cover, and refrigerate; they go into the air fryer straight from the fridge with a minute or two added.
Get the Recipe: Air Fryer Caramel Apple Danish
6. Air Fryer Apple Pie Baked Apples (Lattice-Topped, 30 Min)
Whole apples get their tops cut off and their cores scooped out, then filled with a quick stovetop cinnamon-apple filling and topped with strips of pie crust woven into a lattice. An egg wash and a pinch of cinnamon sugar go on top, and they stand upright in the basket at 320°F for 10 to 15 minutes until the crust is deep gold and the filling bubbles through the gaps. Each apple is its own serving, which is handy when people are eating in shifts.
Granny Smith or Honeycrisp hold up best. The filling can be made a day ahead, and for breakfast a spoonful of Greek yogurt stands in for the ice cream.
Get the Recipe: Air Fryer Apple Pie Baked Apples
7. Apple Flautas (Air Fryer, 15 Minutes)
The fastest recipe on the list. Spoon apple pie filling down the center of flour tortillas, roll them up tight, spray with butter cooking spray, and air fry at 400°F for 5 minutes a side. Roll them in cinnamon sugar the second they come out and drizzle with salted caramel. It’s three pantry ingredients plus the caramel, and they’re the easiest thing to hand to a crowd standing around the kitchen waiting for something to do.
Get the Recipe: Apple Flautas
Thanksgiving Morning Game Plan
Most of the work here can happen Wednesday night, which leaves Thursday morning as mostly pressing a button.
- The night before: roll, cut, and freeze the cinnamon rolls; assemble the danish and refrigerate; cook the baked-apple filling and chill it; make the cheesecake taco filling.
- Morning of: the flautas and apple rings take about 15 to 25 minutes from scratch, so they’re the ones to make fresh while the coffee brews.
- Apples: Granny Smith or Honeycrisp for anything that needs to hold its shape (rings, baked apples). Golden Delicious is called for in the danish filling, and canned apple pie filling does the work in the tacos and flautas.
- Air fryer notes: cook in batches and don’t crowd the basket, line it with parchment under anything sticky, and check a few minutes early since every model runs a little differently. For the cinnamon rolls, keep the low-then-high temperature steps; that’s what gets the centers done before the tops brown.
- Reheating: anything with pastry crisps back up in the air fryer at 320 to 350°F for a few minutes, which beats the microwave every time.
