Recipe 6: Spiced Pumpkin and Dark Chocolate Brownies

Brownie Point Rating: 9/10

Makes: 16 brownies

Prep and Cooking time: 50 minutes

I love chocolate brownies. I love pumpkin. It just made sense. This was a total experiment but one that worked very well – they took next to no time to make, the spices bring out the flavour of the chocolate and the pumpkin keeps them crazily moist. The batch of 16 I made this weekend all went in 2 days…

Equipment you’ll need:

1 Mixing bowl

1 Medium saucepan

1 big spoon

1 brownie/baking tray

Cooling rack

Ingredients

80g butter

150g Dark Chocolate

165g brown sugar

The flesh of about 1/2 a medium-sized pumpkin

2 eggs, whisked

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

140g self-raising flour

1 tablespoon cocoa powder

2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground all-spice

30g chopped pecan nuts

1. Preheat your oven to 180C. Grease your brownie/baking tray with some butter. Roast your pumpkin as described in my pumpkin pie recipe and leave the mashed flesh to cool in a bowl.

2. Combine your butter, dark chocolate and sugar in a saucepan and stir over a low heat until melted and smooth. Leave to cool.

3. Transfer your cooled mixture to a large bowl. Stir in the egg, vanilla extract, sifted flour, cocoa powder, chopped walnuts, ground spices and mashed pumpkin.

4. Pour the mixture into your greased baking tray and cook in the oven for 25 minutes.

5. Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tray for 10 minutes before turning out onto wire rack. Dust with icing sugar and cocoa powder and cut into 16 squares.

BLOKE TIP: You can ramp up the flavour of the brownies by adding a couple of pinches of dried chilli flakes, (chilli and chocolate work together really well, and the pumpkin helps temper the heat,) or a shot of whisky to the mix before cooking. If you do decide to add the whisky, add 5-10 minutes to the cooking time to help cook off some of the alcohol and to make up for the extra liquid.