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!

a belated Thanksgiving feast

Last night we (Mark, Amber, Anthony, and I) put on a thank-you belated Thanksgiving dinner for special friends of ours that have been a blessing to us this year. Everyone went home full and blessed. Here's a few highlights.


Here's Mark with Lil' Wayne, our turkey that he butterflied and made with the greatest glaze I've ever had on a turkey.


Our googly turkeys made from Oreos, PB cups, Whoppers, and candy corn.


The feast! We each took parts of the meal and cooked all day.


Dessert #1 - Pumpkin bread pudding with vanilla creme anglaise and spicy caramel apple sauce. (This is the dessert Bobby Flay made in his Throwdown with Pioneer Woman. It was delicious!)


Chocolate caramel bourbon pecan tart. Delicious, except for the fact that the caramel bubbled over the tart in the oven and burned around the edge of the tart pan. (And also set off the fire alarm and dripped in their oven.)