Ask not what your pumpkin can do for you, ask what you can do with your pumpkin!

It's that time of the year again! Rain, cold weather, holidays, and more rain. I love fall. Squash, specifically pumpkins, are key in fall food. So I made pumpkin brownies! I used my favorite brownie recipe from The America’s Test Kitchen Family Baking Book and swirled in some pumpkin with spices. They turned out pretty great!

Recipe for “Ultimate Fudgy Brownies”:
5 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped course (I used chocolate chips)
2 ounces unsweetened chocolate
8 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoons Dutch-processes cocoa powder
1 ¼ cup sugar
3 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup all-purpose flour

Melt the chocolate, butter, and cocoa together. In another bowl, whisk the sugar, eggs, vanilla, and salt together. Whisk in the melted chocolate mixture until combined. Then add the flour until just incorporated.
Put batter aside.

In another bowl combine 1 ¼ pumpkin (I used canned, don’t tell my mom), 2 tablespoons oil, 2 teaspoons pumpkin spice, and 1 teaspoon cinnamon.

Pour about half of the brownie batter into an 8x8 baking pan. Then pour about half of the pumpkin mixture and try to spread it evenly on top of the batter. Top that with the remaining brownie batter and that with the remaining pumpkin. Use a butter knife to swirl the pumpkin and brownie batter together to make a pretty design. Bake at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes.
Pre-baking pumpkin/brownie swirl

The next evening. I'll blame the roommate?

I can't wait to see what Zoe comes up with!!

Zoe’s Pumpkin Whoopsie Pies

With Spiced Whiskey Butter cream Frosting

Pumpkin. Pumpkin. Pumpkin… what to make with this week ingredient of pumpkin. Mama Callimanis made chocolate pumpkin bars already this week. Pumpkin cupcakes? Little tired of the minis’ and I already made cornbread muffins this morning so pumpkin muffins were not in the running. I was feeling in desperate need of inspiration…so I turned to the Queen of food blogging’s website Tasty Kitchen and up popped a featured recipe of Whoopie Pies. I’ve never had a whoopie pie, however I did experience a flash back to two nights ago I was watching The Best Thing I’ve Ever Ate on Food Network and one of the chefs started talking about homemade whoopie pies, I was intrigued by the idea. I mean who wouldn’t be?? Cake batter baked on a cookie sheet THEN sandwiched together with frosting as the binding??!! So when the featured recipe that was in front of me was Pumpkin Whoopie Pies, I leapt into the hands of fate (and made a few adjustments to the recipe to suit my needs and taste preferences a little more), and let me tell you. I’m glad I did (on both accounts).

Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

¾ cup and two tablespoons flour

½ tsp Baking Powder

½ tsp Baking Soda

¼ tsp Salt

½ tsp ginger

¼ tsp nutmeg

¼ tsp allspice

¼ tsp ground cloves

1 tsp ground cinnamon

¼ cup Unsalted Butter, melted

½ cup and 2 tablespoons Packed Light Brown Sugar

1 whole Large Egg, Room Temperature

¾ of a 12 ounce can of Pumpkin Puree

1 tsp Pure Vanilla Extract

Line baking sheet with parchment paper or a silpat mat if you have one and preheat oven to 350.

Put flour, b.powder, b.soda, salt, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, cloves, and cinnamon in a bowl and whisk together. Set aside.

Use a mixer to blend melted butter and brown sugar together until smooth.

In a measuring cup put your egg and lightly beat it, then add the vanilla extract and pumpkin puree stir all together. Slowly blend this wet mixture into the butter and sugar mixture.

Gently fold the flour mixture into the pumpkin mixture

After the flour is fully mixed in, use an ice-cream scoop to drop large spoonfuls of batter on to your prepared baking sheet. I had to shape mine into a little bit more circular shape after dropping them in, and smushed down the tops a little bit to make sure they wouldn’t rise to much.

Bake at 350 for 10 -14 minutes. Tops should be springy when touched.

Mine turned out to be whoopsie pies because my batter didn’t get blended together thoroughly and there were some parts of the cakes that had holes.

Now for the FUN PART!!

The Spiced Whiskey Butter Cream Filling!!

¼ cup butter (softened not melted)

1/3 cup powdered sugar

1 tsp heavy cream (or milk, to thin out frosting if a little thick)

Pinch of ground ginger

Shake of salt

Smidgen of nutmeg

Touch of cinnamon

Hint of allspice

Dash of vanilla extract

A splash (or two) of Whiskey

Cream together the butter powdered sugar and cream until light and fluffy

When the butter and sugar is fluffed add the spices until well blended.

Bump up the mixer to medium high speed and add your whiskey and vanilla. If you add the wet ingredients and it’s not going fast enough the butter cream tends to lose its fluffiness.

Now take one cooled cake and spread the butter cream on the flat side and cover with another cake on top. Continue with the remaining cakes. I got about 5 whoopsie pies out of this recipe and had just enough frosting to sandwich all the cakes.

A pretty deliciously tasty link to ms val.