pumpkin cheesecake brownies

I made these brownies as the dessert for our pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving dinner with Amber and Anthony. You can read about that on my other blog, Canning: The Next Generation. But here we have some delicious fall goodness, the last of the pumpkin desserts this season. I hand-mixed these, mostly with my trusty little whisk. As much as I love my KitchenAid, sometimes it's fun to remind myself that baking can be done without it!

The cream cheese topping I made separately, using a hand mixer to beat the cream cheese. (My little whisk couldn't cut it with that.)

We ate them with homemade pumpkin ice cream that Mark made (sans the nutmeg since he's an awesome husband and knows I hate it).

They were really rich and thick, though you can't tell from this bad tungsten light photo. Definitely a good combination!

ninja fudge brownies

 

Anthony requested fudge brownies for his birthday, so that's what he got. He didn't ask for ninjas, but thanks to Amber, he got those too. I used a fudge brownie recipe that had three kinds of chocolate (all fair trade certified, except for the last of the Hershey's cocoa we're using up so as to not be wasteful).

I really wanted to catch the egg mixture mid-drip.

I made a foil sling for the brownies so they could be easily pulled out of the pan and cut without damaging the pan.

 Once cool, we added the ninja honor guard.

And once at the restaurant, flaming pirate candles, including a ship, a parrot, and a treasure chest.

The yellow ninja in this next photo looks like he's fist pumping.

 

 

The most rich, fudgey brownie I've ever eaten. Right here to the west of Bounty Bay and north of Parrot's Cove.