Made with Pumpkin!

These moist, chocolatey brownies can be made any time of the year, but make sure you have the key ingredient (pumpkin) on hand before you begin!

Why make Brownies made with Pumpkin? 

Every Thanksgiving I make my favourite pumpkin Cheesecake recipe (find Recipe here), but just like when you make a pumpkin pie, the recipe only calls for about a cup of pumpkin. Naturally, the cans of pure pumpkin puree available in stores are all 796ml, which is 3 ½ cups of pumpkin (I measured), which is over twice, if not three times, the amount needed to make a pumpkin pie or cheesecake. This results every October, in being left with 2/3rds a can of pumpkin that I need to do something with. Smart people probably freeze the excess, but I am never that organized. Usually, I will make a couple of pumpkin spice lattes, but that only uses up a few tablespoons. After that I will forget that it exists in the back of the fridge until it goes bad. To solve that problem, I have started looking for other pumpkin recipes to use up this precious (and increasingly expensive) commodity. Thus, I bring to you these moist chocolatey brownies made with pumpkin puree. 

If you look up pumpkin brownies on the internet, you will find a lot of pumpkin spice mixed with chocolate brownies. That is not these. These brownies are pure chocolate flavoured, the pumpkin acts as a moist base, but does not flavour the brownies; like when you make zucchini bread. While pumpkin spice is delicious, sometimes you just want something all chocolate after all the fall flavours. You can take these to Thanksgiving for the pumpkin haters and tell them after there was pumpkin in them ;p 

As I have already mentioned, pumpkin is a key ingredient in this recipe.  The other is chocolate. I have used semi sweet Hershey chocolate chips. I would stay from using too light of a milk chocolate chip, as it will likely make the pumpkin flavour become noticable.

Start with a square piece of parchment paper, about 4 inches larger than your pan both vertically and horizontally. Thus, if your pan is 8×8, you will want a 12×12 piece of parchment. To make it fit within the pan, cut a slit into the parchment paper two inches from each corner, and make the cut two inches long. (see picture). Then fold the extra two inches from each side inwards. So that there is a middle square the size of your pan. Fold the tabs created by the cuts around the side beside it. I know this sounds confusing….hopefully the pictures help this out. 

One of the best parts about this recipe is that it can be done completely in one saucepan before it is transferred to the baking dish. 

Start by melting your butter on your stove top over medium-low heat.  I do it at medium-low  because if your pan is too hot when the butter is added, it will immediately brown and burn onto your pan very fast. 

Next add your chocolate chips to the pan, stirring until they are melted. Ensure you do not stop stirring so that the chocolate does not get the opportunity to stick to the bottom of the pan. 

Turn off your stove, and take the pan off the heat. Add the sugar, pumpkin, egg, vanilla, amd salt and mix until combined. 

Next add the flour and mix until combined. Pour into your prepared baking pan.

Bake for 20-25mins at 350F or until the centre is set. Allow to cool before removing from the pan. Cut into the desired size. Decorate with buttercream and sprinkles if desired.