Recipe: Pumpkin Swirl Brownies

I had half a can of pureed pumpkin in my fridge, and I was afraid it was going to go bad if I didn't use it soon. I came across this recipe from the Self Proclaimed Foodie blog, and it called for one cup of pumpkin (not a whole can), so it was perfect. Plus, I love pumpkin, I love chocolate... How could this recipe not be a complete winner?

Normally when I find a recipe online, I skip the whole introduction and just go straight to the list of ingredients. But I actually read everything on this page, and I found it very helpful! I especially liked the video Krissy Allori (the writer of the blog) made while she was making this dessert. So make sure to watch it!

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup butter melted
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips
• 1 cup pumpkin pure
• 1 1/2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 °F. Line or grease an 8x8 inch baking pan. Stir the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a bowl.
2. In a medium sauce pot over medium heat, melt butter. Continue to cook while it foams and stir constantly until it browns and you see some brown specks at the bottom and it starts to smell a bit toasted. Remove from heat. Once butter cools a bit, add sugar and vanilla extract. Next, beat in the eggs one at a time with a spoon. Gradually add the flour mixture, and stir the batter until it's evenly moistened. Add half the batter to a separate large bowl.
3. Into one bowl of batter, blend the cocoa powder and chocolate chips. In the second bowl of batter, stir in the pumpkin puree and pumpkin pie spice.
4. Spread 1/2 of the chocolate batter into the bottom of the prepared baking pan, and follow with all of the pumpkin batter. The chocolate batter will be much thicker than the pumpkin batter. For the remaining chocolate batter, you can either spoon it on top or you can put it in a plastic bag, snip off the corner, and squeeze it onto the pumpkin in strips. Use a butter knife or a spatula to swirl the two batters together to create a marbled appearance.
5. Bake in the preheated oven until the brownies begin to pull away from the sides of the pan, and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 40 to 45 minutes. Cool in the pan, cut into squares, and serve.

Unlike most recipes I make, I actually stuck to this ingredients list very closely (I even went out and bought miniature chocolate chips instead of using the regular ones). But I didn't follow the instructions to a T. Of course I was not going to bother melting butter on the stove, and certainly not until the point of it turning brown. Instead I microwaved a stick of butter for about two minutes and got a perfectly melted bowl of better (not browned, but I honestly don't think that's really important). I also did not beat in the eggs individually with a spoon; that's what mixers are for! I'm not sure why Ms. Allori seems anti-technology, but I am all about the fast, electric tools. And when I got to the point to spread the batter, I was afraid I'd waste too much of the chocolate mix in the plastic baggie with that technique, so I just used my spatula to make an "S" shape on the top. Like this:

And then I swirled it with a butter knife like she said, and I think it turned out pretty well:

Okay, it looks a little messy, but it's certainly marbled!

One thing Krissy recommended in her post was to use special paper to line the pan. She likes this kind that has one side aluminum foil, one side parchment paper. I didn't have any of that laying around (who does?), but I took the tip and first lined the pan with aluminum foil, and then put parchment paper on top. When I pulled it out of the oven, the parchment came right out, so that was easy! Not sure I needed the foil (it just stayed in the pan when I tried to remove the brownies), but this certainly made for simple clean-up!

These are indeed delicious brownies. I think the pumpkin and chocolate flavors are pretty well balanced; neither one over-powers the other. And the brownies are SO moist! When I did the toothpick test, the toothpick didn't come out completely clean, but I think that's because of the melted chocolate, not because there was raw batter inside. Krissy says in her blog post that these brownies even stay moist when you freeze them, so I might take her up on that! These are definitely some of the yummiest brownies I've ever had, and my colleagues agree, too!